Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama (???? ,born March 29 ,1929) has been called Japan's greatest living artist.

Related Topics:
March 29 - 1929 - Japan - Artist

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Born in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature.

Related Topics:
Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture - Hallucinations

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
New York City - Georgia O'Keefe - United States - Happenings - Joseph Cornell

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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.

Related Topics:
Feminism - Minimalism - Surrealism - Art Brut - Pop - Abstract expressionism

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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.

Related Topics:
Claes Oldenburg - Andy Warhol - Jasper Johns

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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.

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Yayoi Kusama said about her 1954 painting titled Flower (D.S.P.S),

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:"One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle."

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