At the age of 10 Yayoi Kusama had her first hallucination which she described as flashes
of light auras or dense fields of dots. The dots would come to life and consume her and she would
find herself obliterated. Polka dots have been a lifelong obsession for her. For someone whose
work has crossed from art to fashion and from filmmaking to performance art, her continuing
exploration of the polka dot has remained the one consistent motif. So this is not a film about a
specific artwork. This is a film about the simple polka dot. A dot that has obsessed Kusama for
nine decades, from her struggle for recognition to her later years as an art world sensation.
Yayoi Kusama was born in a rural provincial town in Japan to a wealthy family. That same
year the stock markets crashed and civil unrest in Japan was followed by intense militarism.
In 1941 Japan's entry into the war found the 12-year old Kusama sewing military
parachutes in textile factories. A skill she would later utilize for her soft sculptures.
Her mother was extremely abusive and had planned an arranged marriage for Kusama and a life as an
obedient housewife. In fact she did everything in her power to stop Kusama becoming an artist...
or having any career at all, which she said would bring shame on the family.
But art was Kusama's lifeline, it helped relieve her hallucinations, depression and anxiety which
she still suffers from today. Kusama has described how at times she feels her whole body functions
breaking down, with feelings of becoming "absorbed by" or "dissolved" within her surrounding environment.
Art is a way for her to take back control, a way to fight her demons. Although she was starting to get
some attention in Japan, it was a small art scene then, and she was a woman living under a stifling
patriarchal society. Kusama needed to escape. A chance discovery in a second-hand bookshop
would change her life. American artist Georgia O'Keeffe was one of the most famous artists in
the world, and her works were in every major museum in the US, but she was pretty much unknown in Japan.
Yet somehow - miraculously - a book of her paintings found its way into the young Kusama's hands in
rural Japan. It was a revelation! Kusama was stunned by O'Keeffe's paintings
and would explore similar themes later, but she was also attracted to her achievements as a woman.
Kusama wrote to her in the US and sent her some drawings. In an incredible show of generosity
O'Keefe not only took the time to write back but then sent letters of introduction to important
people in the New York art world. In July 1956 Kusama destroyed 2,000 old work she had created.
America would be a new beginning for the artist and she wouldn't return to japan until 1973.
Kusama arrived in New York with a suitcase full of drawings,
a determination to grab everything going in the city, and (in her own words) to become a star.
The first thing she did was go up to the top of the Empire State building and look down
at the city she planned to conquer. We mustn't underestimate what a difficult task it was for
a young Japanese woman with no support, speaking little to no English to up sticks and moved to
New York from a small Japanese town - in the 1950s! This required monumental determination.
She went from a wealthy life in Japan to living in abject poverty in New York surviving on a
diet of potatoes, onions, and black coffee. No wonder she often describes how she craved fame.
It is something artists rarely discuss but for Kusama it would be her driving force.
The field of dots she experienced in her hallucinations developed into a visual device - the
polka dot. This image of her mother, by ten-year-old Kusama was the first time she would use the dot,
and it would become her "trademark". We could make a comparison with Roy Liechtenstein
who was also using dots or Bridget Riley, who was exploring Op-Art, but for Kusama, dots came directly
from within. For her, dots were a form of healing, and repetition of them was a way to calm her mind,
and overcome her fear and anxiety. They were (as she said) a way to "self-obliterate",
a way to disappear into her artwork. In New York, Kusama began applying the polka dot to animals,
paper, canvas, walls and naked bodies. From the beginning, Kusama played with her persona.
She was a self-styled "outsider" in America, a female artist in an aggressively male dominated scene,
a Japanese person in the overwhelmingly white art scene, and a victim of neurosis and depression.
She refused to be categorized or put in a box, continuously innovating and reinventing herself.
As a critic once said: "Miss Kusama is an artist who fits in everywhere but stands alone"
New York at the time was under the spell of Abstract Expressionism but Kusama's first show
in New York consisted of what she called "Infinity net paintings", starting the obsessive repetitive
work that would define her career. Kusama rejected the broad dramatic marks of Abstract Expressionism
and painted thousands of tiny semi-circles of paint repeated across huge canvases. Invisible
when seen at a distance, but up close form an undulating net with no beginning, middle or
end. Her work was calm and collected, in contrast to the emotional mark making of Jackson Pollock.
The dots and "nets" could be traced back to her early work,
but here they were huge - a physical embodiment of "self-obliteration".
Her work was so groundbreaking, it anticipated the emerging Minimalist movement, and we can see
it as a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. It was a great start for Kusama.
Less than a year in the city, and her first solo show in 1959 created an immediate buzz.
Kusama, always a workaholic spent every waking hour making net paintings, sometimes working through
the night, more and more of them, until her studio was full. Not surprisingly, she suffered
extreme hallucinations, and was rushed to Bellevue hospital for her obsessive compulsive neurosis.
Installation is a term used to describe art that is often designed for a specific place
or for a temporary period of time, and Kusama would become a leading exponent of this art form.
In 1962, she began making soft sculpture phalluses out of cotton stuffed canvas. This was radical work
for a female artist, and these sculptures made over 60 years ago still have the power to shock today,
because of the juxtaposition of humor and sexuality. Her first "official" installation was
in 1963. A rowboat which she covered in her soft phallic shapes, presented in a space where the
walls were covered in wallpaper reproductions of the same sculpture. It was totally unique,
and no one had seen anything like it in New York. Phalluses would become another
theme of Kusama who said that as a child she was forced by her mother to spy on her father,
when she caught him making love to his mistress, it caused a lifelong aversion to sex
One thing the art world rarely discusses is plagiarism between artists. That is unless
you are Yayoi Kusama, who in an unusual move, specifically addressed how her work was "co-opted"
by male artists, who then showed it in more established galleries.
Kusama would later say, it wasn't the idea of being ripped off that bothered her but rather
the lack of acknowledgement. Claes Oldenburg was working with hard materials in the 1960s,
but just months after Kusama's exhibition of soft sculptural works, he put on a show filled
with soft sculptures. It launched Oldenburg's international career. Kusama's innovation in the
art form received little recognition. Then there was Andy Warhol, a close friend of Kusama - or so
she thought. In an interview she said: "Andy Warhol came to the show and admired my wallpaper images.
He said "Wow. fantastic Yayoi, I like this so much" and then in 1966 he went on to cover the walls of
the Leo Castelli gallery with wallpaper. She sank into a depression and retreated to her studio,
covering all her windows so nobody could steal her ideas - and worked in secret.
Then in 1965, kusama re-emerged with her first "Infinity room", called "Phalli's field" in which
she arranged hundreds of polka dotted soft phallic forms in a mirrored room.
Artists have always worked with perspective and infinity, but Kusama's work was one of the earliest
installation artworks that encouraged viewers to enter and experience rather than passively
view a picture in a frame. The room enveloped the viewer and no longer is the viewer in control.
All artists to some extent control how we view their work, but for Kusama, a lack of control of
her health, meant she created work that controls EXACTLY how we the viewer perceive time and space.
Then just seven months after her infinity room failed to sell,
the artist Lucas Samaras showed a similar mirrored environment at the established Pace gallery.
He got rave reviews - and a sellout show. This was Samara's first environment, and there is no
mistaking its similarity to Kusama's mirrored room that preceded it. These mirror infinity rooms are
arguably her most popular works, and when we think of mirrored rooms today we only think of Kusama.
But after seeing Samara's room, Kusama became so deeply depressed that she attempted suicide.
In 1966, Kusama participated in the 33rd venice biennale, the most prestigious arts
festival in the world - the only problem was that she hadn't been asked by the organisers,
she just gate-crashed the event! Without permission she showed "Narcissus garden",
a witty take on the commercialisation of the art world, consisting of hundreds of mirrored
spheres - what she called a "kinetic carpet". Then dressed in a gold kimono she proceeded to sell
each sphere for two dollars, until the biennale committee threw her out. There were many artists
who were aggressive self-promoters but none of them were women. Kusama had to really fight
just for her voice to be heard, and some people didn't like that. They criticised what they
called "her excessive self-promotion and lust for publicity", but as Kusama saw it, she was
a "living work of art". Her work is deeply personal and so she places herself central to that work.
Kusama had been a pioneer in minimalism, sculpture and installation art, and now she turned to
performance art. Some of Kusama's earliest surviving paintings relate to the horrors of war,
and she had a strong political conscience. In 1967 she began organising anti-war protests
and happenings known as "Atomic Explosions". She painted her friends nude bodies with polka dots
and demonstrated on wall street, demanding the government bring back the troops from Vietnam.
For all her zany public persona, Kusama was completely serious about her
work, and as with much of her art, what on the surface seemed almost silly and lightweight,
made a powerful statement. Kusama was well placed to criticise war.
Her youth had been marked by the effects of the Atomic bomb, and she was viscerally opposed to war.
She protested the only way she knew -through art - the work brought her more notoriety but
few financial benefits. In another revolutionary performance of 1968, Kusama even officiated at
the first "gay wedding" having formed her own church: "The church of self-obliteration". Her performances
hit the news in Japan and caused a scandal, bringing shame on her deeply conservative family.
In 1973, Kusama returned to Japan where she was virtually unknown and dismissed.
Then in 1977, after a lifetime of fighting anxiety and hallucinations, she checked herself into a
psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, and has lived there ever since. Kusama has been open about
her mental health and remains on medication to prevent depression and suicidal thoughts.
Every single day she commutes to her studio and works obsessively on her paintings from 9am to 6pm.
In 1989, Kusama reached 60 years old, an important birthday in Japanese culture,
that symbolises a new start. And it certainly was for Kusama!
Although she had a cult following, she was pretty much forgotten about by the art world, until
1989, unexpectedly The Centre for International Contemporary Arts in New York asked to stage a
retrospective of her art. It would relaunch her career - both internationally and in Japan. Then
in 1993 she returned to the Venice Biennale. This time she was invited as a representative of Japan.
Kusama has finally achieved a worldwide success that had eluded her for so long. fuelled in some
part by social media. People queue up for hours for just 60 seconds in one of her Infinity room
installations. Each image they take of infinity, join millions more on the internet - itself
infinite. Today in her 90s, Kusama is as productive as ever. Often dismissed as "quirky" or "populist", she
is in fact, one of the most radical female artists of all time, who made some of the most important
artworks of the 1960s. An innovator and a rule breaker. Many artists have famously struggled
with their mental health, and like them it is impossible to separate the art of Yayoi Kusama
from her mental health, but why should we? Artists like Kusama, make us question our understanding
of mental illness, and see it not as an "obstacle", but as just another part of the human condition.
These infinite repetitive works were originally designed to eliminate Kusama's intrusive thoughts,
but now, as viewers, we can experience a small part
of her thoughts and feelings in the physical endlessness of "Kusama's world".