Yayoi Kusama: creativity in polka dots

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Yayoi Kusama is one of the foremost creative figures of our time. She is widely known in her native Japan and the United States, although relatively unknown in Europe. During her half-century career, this woman has created more than 50 thousand works, most of which are united by her trademark “polka-dot” motif.

It is impossible to talk about Yayoi's work and not talk about the ubiquitous points. The artist has been haunted by this motive since childhood. She tells how, at the age of 10, she began to see dots, nets and purple flowers everywhere. “I can still see them,” says Yayoi Kusama. They cover canvases and grow on floors, ceilings, chairs and armchairs. Then they move to my body, my clothes and my soul. It's like an obsession. Indeed, dots of different colors and sizes are present in the author's works, regardless of the genre or time of creation.

Yayoi creates paintings, collages, sculptures, performances and installations in which features of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, pop art and abstract expressionism can be found. Kusama herself calls herself an "obsessed artist." Unfortunately, there is some truth in this: for many years a woman has been struggling with mental disorders. However, this obsession does not in the least interfere with Yayoi's creativity. Quite the opposite: in 2008, one of her works was sold at auction for $ 5, 1 million, which is a record amount for a living female artist.

Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929 in Japan, but at the age of 27 she moved to New York (USA). In 1973, she returned to Japan due to illness. Now the artist lives in a clinic for the mentally ill in Tokyo, but does not abandon her creativity; her studio is very close to the hospital. Yayoi claims that he cannot imagine his life without work and dreams of living 200 or even 300 years - all in order to create.