An effective means?
“Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art” Yayoi Kusama
Hallucinations
Yayoi Kusama’s home in Tokyo is a psychiatric hospital where she lives voluntarily. From there, she goes to her studio every day and creates works of art. She says in interviews that this is the only way for her to combat her anxiety.
Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan, the artist had to overcome considerable resistance in her conservative parental home as a teenager for her desire to work as a contemporary artist. Instead, a proper marriage was planned.
After one year of training in classical Japanese painting in Kyoto, she emigrated to the USA. New York and the art scene there seemed to be the most important place for her to assert herself with her art.
She soon began to use a motif of colored dots, often referred to as polka dots, to which she remained faithful throughout her life. In interviews, she described the colored dots as part of her hallucinations, which she had to capture artistically in order to process them.
Continuous ups and downs
She speaks openly about her fears and numerous suicide attempts. After initial success in the United States, she fell into obscurity and returned to Japan.
Her art was initially of little interest there. She stuck with it, continued to fight her problems with her art and is now one of Japan’s most renowned artists.
Important museums around the world such as the Tate Gallery in London, the SFMOMA in San Francisco and the Guggenheim Museum in New York show her works. There has been a dedicated Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo since 2017.
In 2023, Louis Vuitton developed an extensive collection in collaboration with the artist, in which Yayoi Kusama’s dot motifs can be seen on sneakers, handbags and many other accessories.
Smiling reactions
Yayoi Kusama’s works can also be seen on the art island of Naoshima, including the characteristic pumpkins. They are among the most photographed objects on the island. Queues regularly form in front of them, while the rest of the island seems almost deserted.
Red Pumpkin Sculpture, Naoshima,Japan, 2023
The reaction of viewers is almost identical: there is hardly anyone who does not have a smile on their face when they see Yayoi Kusama’s art.
People like her art. The rooms in which she carefully positions her dot motifs as light objects usually have time limits. Visitors love to linger in them and lose themselves in time and space.
A stroke of luck
Yayoi Kusama can express her pain in art. Not every artist is able to do this. For many, psychiatric clinics are the end of their artistic existence.
14 Pumpkins Installation, Love for ever, Biennale, Bangkok 2019
Many Ukrainian artists such as Serhiy Zhadan, whose art in the form of poetry, novels and music is an important anchor of hope for his compatriots in Ukraine, have gone to the war front. Others, such as the writer Victoria Amelia, who died in a bomb attack on Kramatorsk, have become victims of Russian aggression.
Art, which is so enormously important for processing horror and fear, is often the first victim of war, because the aim of war is always to eradicate a national identity.
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Photography © GloriousMe 2024
