Yayoi KUSAMA — a heretic of the art world
Disclaimer: The information provided in this episode comes from multiple sources and are not my scientific studies or discoveries. Bear with me as I am editing all the texts and crediting the authors. Thank you!
Welcome to HerArt podcast, a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. In our third episode, we will talk about Yayoi KUSAMA — a heretic of the art world that identifies with no one movement, calling her style “Kusama art.” My name is Nata Andreev and I am going to tell you seven curious facts that you didn’t know about the woman that has devoted her life as an avant-garde artist. It will be amazing if you could join me for the twelfth session of my Wknd Study Group this Sunday, March 31st. We will discuss the movement that started in the opposition to rococo which is Neoclassicism.
Curious Fact #1
Kusama was born in 1929 into a well-off but dysfunctional family in Nagano, Japan. Largely shielded from the horrors of World War II, she was, as she has claimed, nevertheless scarred by her mother’s cruelty, her father’s infidelities, and her family’s discouragement of her interest in art-making. Kusuma is both fascinated and repulsed by sex and considers herself asexual. Her fear of sex began when her mother repeatedly sent her to spy on her serially philandering father. Her obsession with male anatomy is manifest in works such as her famed Accumulation №1., a bulky white chair covered in stuffed phallus shapes.
Curious Fact #2
Yayoi Kusama’ s iconic polka dots are inspired by a hallucination she experienced while looking at a tablecloth as a child. The artist claims that she began painting these dots after a childhood psychiatric episode. “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,” she recalled “I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space.”
Curious Fact #3
She broke out to international acclaim in 1966 when she was the first woman to represent Japan in the 33rd Venice Biennale. It was there that she installed her now-iconic Narcissus Garden, which was recently installed in New York’s Fort Tilden at Rockaway Beach. Consisting of dozens upon dozens of silvered spheres, the work caused an uproar when Kusama offered to sell each sphere for $2.
Curious Fact #4
Georgia O’Keeffe was her friend and advisor. The celebrated painter of flowers and animal skulls was an astute businesswoman in addition to being one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. The ever-keen Kusama began penning letters to O’Keeffe during the 1950s. Then in her 20s, Kusama asked for advice about how to succeed in the New York art world. O’Keeffe counseled Kusama, going so far as to encourage her own dealer to buy several of her works.
Curious Fact #5
One of her famed pumpkins was shattered by a selfie-gone-awry just days into her 2017 Infinity Rooms exhibition. Soon after her fifty-year retrospective opened at Washington, DC’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, a viewer lost his footing while trying get a good angle inside her infinity room All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins (2016), resulting in the un-eternal demise of one of the artist’s iconic pumpkins and a ban on photos inside of the room.
Curious Fact #6
Kusama has lived in a mental hospital (by choice) since 1977. When she returned to Japan in 1973, Kusama suffered a mental breakdown. She checked herself in 1977 into Seiwa Hospital in Shinjuku, Tokyo, where she has been living ever since. Her art studio is within walking distance.
Curious Fact #7
Yayoi Kusama is considered the most successful living female artist. With hours-long lines to enter her museum and gallery shows, there is certainly no doubt that Kusama is a crowd favorite. This has translated to commercial success as well — Kusama boasts the highest auction prices of any living woman artist. The highest price for any woman artist, living or dead, belongs to her mentor Georgia O’Keeffe.
Thank you so much for listening to the second episode of HerArt podcast — a project for art lovers, especially art created by women. If you want to follow more of what we do, find us on Facebook and Instagram. Don’t forget about our monthly giveaways! Share your favorite artwork created by a female artist and be rewarded with feminist stickers. Tune in next month, when I am going to tell you about Maria SIBYLLA MERIAN — the woman who turned science into art. I’ll see you later!
