If you haven’t heard of Yayoi Kusama, then you may be missing out on a chance to experience the works of one of the 21^st century’s most unique artists. Mentioned in 2016 Time Magazine’s most influential people in the world, Yayoi, now in her 90’s is best known for her sculpture works, paintings, repetitive patterns, performance art, fashion designs, poetry, film making, and novels. At auction, her pieces sell for millions of dollars and her global notoriety as a contemporary artist has people lining up for hours at museums and galas across the world in order to experience and immerse themselves in her work.

Describing herself as an avant-garde artist, Yayoi has spent the last 40 years living in Tokyo in a psychiatric hospital but continues to work in her studio every day. For those familiar with her work, polka dots, pumpkins, and eternity rooms come to mind. She is as eccentric as her art and her pieces allow the viewer to be captivated by her psychological expressions, some bright with color, appealing to children and all walks of life, and others darker and emotionally charged.

She is the biggest selling female artist in the world and continues to draw crowds wherever her pieces are displayed, allowing visitors to take pictures and post them on social media, thus spreading her passion across different platforms and harmonizing a constant theme of eternity and multidimensional existence.

“Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos”. Yayoi Kusama, 1968

Born in 1929 in Motsumoto, Japan, she had a very traditional upbringing and found it difficult to pursue her appetite for art, since her mother especially was against her passion and wanted instead for her to marry rich and become a housewife. She tells of a story when her mother threw her paints and canvases away in an attempt to reel her back in. But Yayoi was obsessive and moved on to study art in Japan where her works did not appeal to the mainstream Japanese community. However, she managed to catch the attention of some art critiques and Japanese scholars who encouraged her to continue; eventually being noticed by some western collectors. She knew in order to pursue her passion; she would have to leave Japan and went through the extent of blindly writing to popular western artists to seek advice.

In 1958 she ended up in New York, and overlooking the city from the top of the Empire State Building she proclaimed that she was going to make a name for herself and this was her new beginning. It was a man’s arena in the world of art back then, but she devoted herself to her work and drew every day and dedicated her time to painting; once saying that sometimes she painted from dawn to dusk. Her meticulous dots, which take form in both micro and macro levels, some extending to more than 30 feet, represent an anatomy of sorts, where the viewer can see same painting from an atomic perspective and step back to view a larger one. 

Throughout the 60’s she was known for her visual pieces and sexually charged works, often sparking some political or social anxiety. Of note, are her phallus themed works that enshrine furniture and fill rooms, and her use of mirrors. She has been consistent in the way she manages to include the viewer in her art, like the Obliteration Room for example; a completely white and furnished room from top to bottom, pristinely clean, and open to public. Each visitor to the Obliteration Room is given polka dot stickers to stick anywhere they want, and as time passes, the exhibit is amassed with an explosion of color.

My favorite are the eternity rooms, especially the dim rooms with mirrors and scattered lights that change color and surround you with eternal orbs as if you were in the cosmos. People have described these rooms as having an out of body experience where they existed in an alternate reality.

It seems fitting that today, more than any other time in history, people can relate to her art because we live in a world that technology has allowed us to experience virtual reality and filter our existence through social media. We have our physical identity as well as our online identity and we shift in between these worlds much like Yayoi’s art. She has given us surrealism in her work and is very much an environmental artist because of the way her patterns captivate the space in which they exist and present a symphony of architecture, art, and alternate reality.