Yayoi Kusama

Annie Recnetly told me to look at the work of this artist. Her work is really immersive, and very intriguing. Her work focuses primarily on her mental disability, and allows this to dictate its content.

Yayoi Kusama arrived in New York in 1958 and quickly became known as an artist there. Her work includes sculptures, books, performance art, installations and photo collages. Although Kusama showed with influential artists in New York, she never achieved long term critical or financial support and returned to Tokyo in the mid-seventies.

Kusama began her career by showing paintings in New York. These "net paintings" were large works with circular repetitive patterns. Her first sculpture (probably 1961) was an armchair covered with stuffed fabric phallic shapes and painted white. More objects covered with these phalluses followed. Kusama has also covered objects such as suitcases, coats and mannequins with macaroni and paint. Her installations often feature mirrors and polka dotted objects. The installation Narcissus Garden is comprised of 1500 mirror balls floating in water.

Yayoi Kusama's mental illness began in childhood when she began hallucinating the dots, nets and flowers which subsequently appear in her paintings and sculptures. Today, she voluntarily resides in a mental institution in Japan. Kusama's most noted work was created between 1958-1968 in New York City. In 1998, she had a retrospective called Love Forever at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.