Yayoi Kusama - Artist

Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Kusama had hallucinations beginning at a very young age, some suicidal. She believed many of her mental problems were due to the severe physical abuse she endured at the hands of her mother.

Kusama moved to New York City at the age of 27. Her correspondence with Georgia O'Keefe convinced her that she wanted to be a part of the big city atmosphere. She made herself known quickly by organizing gatherings in popular places like Central Park and Brooklyn Bridge to protest the Vietnam War. Her meetings often involved nudity. She made high-profile friends while producing her work in the city. Beyond O'Keefe, she counted Joseph Cornell and Donald Judd among her many supporters.

Kusama fell ill in 1973, and returned to Japan. In the mid-1970's, she moved into a mental health hospital, and remains there today. She still works at her studio, which is within a few blocks of the facility.

Kusama's work is mostly focused on Conceptual Art, but contains small brushes of other genres. These attributes include surrealism, minimalism, abstract impressionism, pop art and feminism. She is obsessed with ritualism and patterns, which is evidenced in all of her work by polka dots (she calls them "infinity nets").

Her work includes paintings, soft sculptures, environmental installations and collages. She is also a published poet and novelist. Some of her famous works of art include 'Red Dot Obsession', 'Infinity Dots', 'Infinity Collections', 'Tulips of Shangri-La' and 'Flower'.

Kusama's work has been compared to artists such as Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. Kusama received the Praemium Imperiale in October 2006. She was the first women to receive this award, one of the most prestigious awards given by Japan to honor internationally recognized artists. Other awards she won include: The Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize and Foreign Minister's Recommendations (2000); Asahi Prize (2001); Medal with Dark Blue Ribbon (2002); French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Officer) (2003); Nagano Governor's Prize (2003); National Lifetime Achievement Award the Order of the Rising Sun (2006). For her gallery shows in 1995-96 she won the Best Gallery Show, and then won again in 1996-97 from the International Association of Art Critics. Outside of arts, she won the Tenth Literary Award for New Writers from the magazine Yasei Jidai for her novel "The Hustlers Grotto of Christopher Street" in 1983.

Kusama's work has been showcased in places such as the Center for International Contemporary Arts (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (Oxford, England), Musee Municipale (Calais, France) and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Tokyo, Japan).

Kusama was an inspiration to women artists; even Yoko Ono has cited Kusama as an inspiration. She set a precedent for women artists in Japan by winning the first Praemium Imperiale award. Her works included sexuality, which, at the time, was not generally accepted from females. She opened the door for other female artists to break the mold and push the boundaries society had set for them. She also played an important role in the Vietnam protests, which was another highly controversial topic at the time. Kusama has had an enormous impact on the world of art, proving that female artists could compete with the dominant males of her era.