Yayoi Kusama

(YAH-YOI KUH-SAHM-AH)

Laura Murphy & Danielle Biel

LAURA:
 BACKGROUND:
● Born March 22nd, 1929 (90 years
old)
● Japanese Contemporary artist
● Works primarily in sculpture and
installation
● Also active in painting,
performance, film, fashion, poetry,
fiction, and other arts
● Work falls in the periods of
Contemporary Art, Pop Art, and
Minimalism

DANIELLE: (everything on slide and notes)

Relationship:
During her time in New York, Kusama had a brief relationship with artist Donald Judd. She
then began a long, but platonic, relationship with the surrealist artist Joseph Cornell. She
was 26 years his junior – they would call each other daily, sketch each other, and he
would send personalized collages to her. Their lengthy association would last until his
death in 1972
EARLY CAREER
1950-1977

LAURA:
The Germ, 1952. Ink and pastel on paper, Lingering Dream, 1949. Pigment on paper

LAURA:

● Early interest in avant-garde

● By 1950 began depicting abstracted natural forms in watercolor,
gouache, and oil pastel on paper
● Her early repititious work was stabilizing for her
Phalli's Field infinity room
(1965)

LAURA:

● In 1957, moved from Japan to Seattle

○ A year later to NYC
 Late 1960’s

LAURA:

● Covered walls, floors, canvases, household objects, and naked

assistants with polka dots
○ which became a trademark of her work
○ Since she was a child, she had hallucinations of spots, and that’s why
she began painting polka dots on things
 Infinity Rooms-1963

LAURA:
● Since 1963, has been working on series of Mirror/Infinity Rooms
installations
○ They create an illusion of never ending space
Original- 1966

LAURA:
First created out of silver-colored plastic, Narcissus Garden was
both a sculpture on display and a piece of performance art, as the
artist sold the spheres to visitors for 2 USD each. Staked into the lawn
were two signs stating: “NARCISSUS GARDEN, KUSAMA” and
“YOUR NARCISSIUM FOR SALE.”

-Now recreated as a landscape installation at The Glass House in

New Canaaan
Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead at MoMa (1969)

LAURA:
● Between 1967 and 1969 focused on works with maximum
publicity
○ usually involving Kusama painting polka dots on her naked performers
○ Grand Orgy to Awaken the Dead at the MoMA (1969)
○ During this 8 performers stripped and stepped in the fountain and
assumed poses mimicking the nearby sculptures by Picasso, Giacometti,
and Maillol.
○ In 1968, Kusama presided over the happening Homosexual Wedding at
the Church of Self-obliteration at 33 Walker Street in New York
○ performed alongside Fleetwood Mac and Country Joe and the Fish at the
Fillmore East in New York City
○ opened naked painting studios and a gay social club called the Kusama
Homophile Kompany
 “The money made with this
stock is enabling the war to
continue. We protest this
cruel, greedy instrument of the
war establishment.”

-Yayoi Kusama (in a release that

prefaced the performance)

Anatomic Explosion on Wall Street (1968)

LAURA:

○ In the 1960’s she organized outlandish happenings in public

spaces like Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge-often
involving nudity and sometimes protest
○ Including a protest for the Vietnam War
LAURA:
● Wrote an open letter to Nixon offering to have sex with him if he
stopped the war
KUSAMA
THE MOVE BACK “if it were not for
TO JAPAN art, I would have
killed myself a long
time ago”

-Yayoi Kusama

LAURA:
In 1973 Kusama returned to Japan due to ill health
● she began writing shockingly visceral and surrealistic novels, short stories, and
poetry
● Also became an art dealer
● That business folded
● In 1977 she checked into the the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill, where she
eventually took up permanent residence
● Her studio, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s, is a
short distance from the hospital in Shinjuku, Tokyo
● They called her a “national disgrace” in Japan as well, losing faith in her as she
strayed from her traditional art
● Often quoted saying “if it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time
ago”
LATER CAREER
1980’s-PRESENT

All The Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, 2016

DANIELLE:
● After leaving new york, she was practically forgotten until late 1980’s and
1990’s until a number of retrospectives revived interest
● 1993, a dazzling mirrored room filled with small pumpkin sculptures in which she
resided in color-coordinated magician's attire
● Kusama went on to produce a huge, yellow pumpkin sculpture covered with an
optical pattern of black spots
● In her ninth decade, Kusama has continued to work as an artist.
● She has harkened back to earlier work by returning to drawing and painting; her
work remained innovative and multi-disciplinary,
 Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2009)

DANIELLE:
Revived and continued her series of infinity rooms (shown)
-meant to be an immersive experience for the viewer
- a 2012 exhibition displayed multiple acrylic-on-canvas works. Also featured was an
exploration of infinite space in her Infinity Mirror rooms
INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM – DANCING LIGHTS THAT FLEW UP TO THE UNIVERSE (2019)

DANIELLE:
● In 2017, a 50-year retrospective of her work opened at the Hirshhorn Museum in
Washington, DC. The exhibit featured six Infinity Mirror rooms, and was scheduled
to travel to five museums in the US and Canada
Dots Obsession (2011)

DANIELLE:
These polka dot installations are meant to immerse the viewer in
her childhood hallucinations

These are inflatable pieces and have been installed many times
since the original display
 All About Love Speaks Forever (2018)

DANIELLE:
The Souls of Millions
of Light Years Away
(2015)

DANIELLE:
(what it actually looks like walking through an infinity room installation)
KUSAMA
IN POP CULTURE

DANIELLE:
● Superchunk, an American indie band, included a song called "Art Class (Song for
Yayoi Kusama)" on its Here's to Shutting Up album
● Magnolia Pictures released the biographical documentary Kusama: Infinity on 7
September 2018 and a DVD version on 8 January 2019
● The 2004 Matsumoto Performing Art Center in Kusama's hometown Matsumoto,
designed by Toyo Ito, has an entirely dotted façade
● The Art Angle Podcast: How Yayoi Kusama Became an Unlikely Pop-Culture
Phenomenon
INTENT/MEANING
OF WORK

DANIELLE:
● Kusama's works on display are meant to immerse the whole person into
Kusama's accumulations, obsessions, and repetitions
● wanted others to sympathise with her in her troubled life
● that without her trauma, Kusama would not have created these works as well or
perhaps not at all
● Art had become a coping mechanism for Kusama
KUSAMA
TODAY

DANIELLE:
She still lives in the Seiwa Hospital in Shinjuku, Tokyo. This is the same
psychiatric hospital that she (willingly) moved to in 1977.
-Her studio is within walking distance of the hospital where she lives
- 90 years old
-still practicing art
KUSAMA
UPCOMING WORK One with Eternity
● April 4th 2020-September 20th
2020
● Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn
Collection
○ the Smithsonian, Washington,
DC
● a tribute to the life and practice of
Yayoi Kusama
● Will include early work like Phalli’s
Field (1965) and later work like
Pumpkin (2016)

DANIELLE:
● April 4th 2020-September 20th 2020
● Yayoi Kusama in the Hirshhorn Collection
○ (the Smithsonian, Washington, DC)
● a tribute to the life and practice of Yayoi Kusama
● Will include early work like Phalli’s Field (1965) and later
work like Pumpkin (2016)
● Kusama is a renowned international artist whose work
has stood for feminism, activism, culture/breaking cultural
norms, mental health awareness, LGBTQ rights, and so
much more
 ● https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/yayoi-kusama-8094/qui
ck-5-yayoi-kusama

References ● https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-yayoi-ku
sama
● Moma.org
● News.artnet.com
● https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yayoi-Kusama
● https://www.theartstory.org/artist/kusama-yayoi/
● http://yayoi-kusama.jp/e/biography/
● https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/yayoi-kusama
● https://www.phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2017/octob
er/02/why-yayoi-kusama-wrote-to-richard-nixon/
● https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/yayoi-kusama-8094/ku
sama-and-anti-war-activism
● https://whitney.org/Exhibitions/YayoiKusama
● https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/05/11/inside-yayoi
-kusamas-new-exhibit-give-me-love/
● https://universotokyo.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/polka-d
ot-queen-yayoi-kusama-2/
● https://hirshhorn.si.edu/exhibitions/one-with-eternity-yayo
i-kusama-in-the-hirshhorn-collection/