Yayoi Kusama previously-blogged (born March 29, 1929) has been called Japan’s greatest living artist. Born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature. Early in Kusama’s career, she began covering surfaces (walls, floors, canvases, and later, household objects and naked assistants) with the polka dots that would become a trademark of her work. The vast fields of polka dots, or “infinity nets”, as she called them, were taken directly from her hallucinations. She left her native country at the age of 27 for New York City, on the advice of Georgia O’Keefe. During her time in the United States, she quickly established her reputation as a leader in the avant-garde movement. She organized outlandish happenings in conspicuous spots like Central Park and the Brookyln Bridge, was enormously productive, and counted Joseph Cornell among her friends and supporters, but did not profit financially from her work. She returned to Japan in ill health in 1973. Her work shares some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop, and abstract expressionism, but she describes herself as an obsessive artist. Her artwork is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content, and includes paintings, soft sculptures, performance art and installations. Yayoi Kusama has exhibited work with Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns. Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 1993, and in 1998 & 1999 a major retrospective exhibition of her work toured the U.S. and Japan. Today she lives, by choice, in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital. “If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,” Kusama is often quoted as saying. (via Metro Artwork)
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