I can’t begin to explain my fascination with Yayoi Kusama, nor do I believe she would want me to. Kusama is one of Japan’s most prolific artists, and is best known for her massive Infinity Net paintings, her sculptures, her performance art, and her installations. She is also a novelist, a poet, and a fashion designer. Kusama’s artwork is a constant exploration of the way she sees the world, and a meticulous examination of the “single dot” in the universe that is her own life. As Ali Smith wrote in Tate Etc., “For [Kusama], art is a fertile bleed, something which spreads on to the walls, the floor, out into the room, all over the self. Mindscape and landscape are the same in her work, a reminder that we are all where we live, that we make what surrounds us as much as it makes us.”

Kusama, now 82 years old, will be launching a collaboration with Louis Vuitton in July 2012. She is the first female artist to collaborate with the brand.

1. Yayoi Kusama’s childhood in rural Japan was “like a nightmare” (her words in issue 10 of Lula, not mine). Born in 1929 to an abusive mother, she experienced continual hallucinations throughout her childhood, and was prone to morbid obsessions. The first subjects to appear in Kusama’s earliest paintings from childhood were her mother, the sun, the moon, and clouds.

2. Kusama left Japan for New York City in 1958 and spent several years entrenched in the art scene; she exhibited with everyone from Donald Judd to Andy Warhol, and was friendly with Georgia O’Keeffe.

3. In the sixties, Kusama opened a boutique where she sold her own mod clothing designs, many of which were made from see-through materials. Nudity was common in much of her work at the time, and the shop included private studios where models would have their bodies painted and photographed.

(photography copyright © Harrie Verstappen, The Looniverse)

4. In 1968, Kusama designed a bridal gown for two men to wear at their wedding, which took place at Kusama’s Church of Self-Obliteration and was directed by the artist herself, who had been dubbed the “High Priestess of Polka Dots.” Polka dots—which represent disease for Kusama—started appearing as motifs in her paintings around age 10; they are present in many of her works, including street performances that involved painting polka dots on nude men and women.

5. Kusama calls her work “psychosomatic,” and continually explores the themes of eternity, emptiness, hallucination, obsession, compulsion, accumulation, and repetition, among others. In her thirties, she focused in particular on entropy, sensuality, and femininity through a surrealist lens.

6. In addition to her autobiography, Infinity Net, Kusama has written eight novels and countless poems.

(photography copyright © Harrie Verstappen, The Looniverse)

7. Throughout the late 1960s, Kusama staged over 200 “Happenings” in public spaces around New York City and throughout Europe. The performances included body painting festivals, fashion shows, orgies, and anti-war demonstrations. When she moved back to Japan, Kusama began staging performances on temple grounds in Tokyo—for one, she toilet-papered a graveyard.

8. In 1968, the artist launched Kusama Fashion Company Ltd., and sold her avant-garde clothing and accessory line in “Kusama Corner” at Bloomingdale’s in New York. She staged fashion shows in Rome, Paris, Belgium, and Germany.

9. Kusama moved back to Japan in 1973 to focus on her health and to pursue a more peaceful artistic lifestyle than New York City would allow. Since the mid-1970s, she has lived voluntarily in a psychiatric hospital, and continues to create artwork in a studio nearby.

10. In order to create a body of work that she feels will leave an impact on future generations, Kusama would like to live to be at least 200 or 300 years old. As long as she has the energy to continue creating, she will carry on.

Visit Tate Modern’s Yayoi Kusama exhibition before it ends on June 5, 2012.

text by Stephanie Fereiro
image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Tags: art, art and fashion, stephanie fereiro, yayoi kusama