Yayoi Kusama, who has died aged 97, transformed personal trauma and hallucinations into an extraordinary body of work that made her one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists.

In the history of the National Gallery of Victoria, its most successful ticketed exhibition did not feature the work of Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso. It was of the veteran Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who has died aged 97.

Sasha Grishin

Held over the summer months in 2024–25, the Melbourne exhibition attracted 570,537 ticketed visitors.

Kusama’s exhibitions throughout the world have attracted huge crowds. Her infinity mirror rooms, sprawling seas of polka dots, dancing pumpkins and huge expanses of reflective surfaces have become some of the most photographed art objects in human history.

Her art has had a huge impact on many art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, including pop art, performance art, minimalism, environmental art, video art, fashion, filmmaking and feminism.

A difficult childhood

Kusama was born on 22 March 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, to parents who were merchants and operated a plant nursery and seed farm.

She suffered from hallucinations from childhood and by the age of 10 had created paintings in watercolours, pastels and oils using polka dot and net motifs that she encountered in her visions.

She described her childhood as traumatic, with a physically abusive mother and a womanising father, and a time when her artistic endeavours were discouraged. She found refuge in her art.

Her childhood was overshadowed by World War II. By the time she was 13, she was sewing parachutes for Japanese soldiers and was aware of American bombers flying overhead and of constant air-raid sirens. She attended Arigasaki High School and, in 1948, studied Nihonga painting at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts.

By 1950, Kusama was exhibiting in Japan, to some acclaim, her sprawling paintings, mainly on paper, of abstracted natural forms and covering surfaces – floors, walls, ceilings and naked assistants – with polka dots that she would term ‘infinity nets’.

Concerning her painting Flower (D.S.P.S), 1954, she wrote:

One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows, and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space and be reduced to nothingness.

The heart of the art scene

In 1957, Yayoi Kusama travelled to the United States and settled in New York. She was at the heart of the American post-war art movement, where she exhibited to considerable applause large paintings, soft sculptures and environmental sculptures using mirrors and electric lights.

In the 1960s, she staged many happenings, such as body painting festivals, fashion shows and anti-war demonstrations.

It has been argued that her work had a profound impact on artists, including Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol.

She was also involved in film productions and newspaper publication.

In 1968, the film Kusama’s Self-Obliteration, which Kusama produced and in which she played the leading role, won a prize at the Fourth International Experimental Film Competition in Belgium and the Second Maryland Film Festival, and second prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

She held exhibitions and staged happenings in various countries in Europe and participated in the Venice Biennale in 1966, where she exhibited her Narcissus Garden comprising hundreds of mirrored spheres.

(Narcissus Garden entered the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria in 2024, in its new iteration of 1,400 stainless steel balls, each 30cm in diameter.)

The artist’s physical and mental health deteriorated while she was in America and she attempted suicide.

For her, her art was the path to salvation.

A return to Japan

Kusama returned to Japan to live there permanently in 1973.

After a further suicide attempt, in 1977 she admitted herself into the Tokyo psychiatric institute, the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill, from which she was never discharged.

She lived in the hospital and made daily excursions to her studio, where she maintained a frenetic pace of work.

Yayoi Kusama was one of the most acclaimed artists of her time. A major retrospective exhibition of her work held in 1998 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art travelled to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

There were also major retrospective exhibitions at the Whitney Museum, New York, and Tate Modern, London, in 2012, and at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, in 2017. In 2017, the Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Tokyo.

Commercially, her work achieved record prices and she received various awards for her novels, poetry and films.

In an interview with Infinity Net in 2012, Yayoi Kusama said:

I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.

 https://theconversation.com/the-only-method-i-have-found-that-relieved-my-illness-is-to-keep-creating-art-remembering-yayoi-kusama-246029

IN GUS's FATHER'S TAILOR OFFICE THERE WAS A LARGE SET OF THREE MIRRORS ON HINGES. IT WAS USED FOR CLIENTS TO APPRECIATE THAT THE SUITS MADE BY OUR DAD WAS PERFECT ON ALL SIDES...

I REMEMBER WE KIDS, MY BROTHER AND I, USED TO ENCLOSE OURSELVES INSIDE AS WE PLACED THE MIRRORS AT 60 DEGREES IN A TRIANGULAR REFLECTION. WE COULD SEE OURSELVES REPEATED REPEATED REPEATED TO INFINITY ON THE THREE SIDES....

MAY YAYOI REST IN PEACE.

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

IMAGE AT TOP — PRIVATE PICTURE:

Yayoi Kusama is among the world’s most popular artists, and her ‘infinity rooms’ have become recognisable across the globe. The installation THE SPIRITS OF THE PUMPKINS DESCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS, 2017 is on display at the Western Plains Cultural Centre.

This work of art is on long term loan from the National Gallery of Australia with support from the Australian Government as part of Sharing the National Collection.

Launched in 2023, Sharing the National Collection supports the National Gallery to work with regional and suburban cultural institutions across Australia to share works of art from the national collection on long-term loan.

Register your interest or learn more about Sharing the National Collection.

Sharing the National Collection
15 Nov 2025 – Nov 2027
Dubbo, NSW