Sometimes Called the “Princess of Polka Dots” Yayoi Kusama is an eccentric artist, at 91 years of age and many years of experience in the business; she is most notable for her sculptures and installations. However, she also pursues many other mediums such as painting, fashion and even poetry.

   She was born in 1929 in Matsumoto city Nagano, from a young age the focal point of her drawing was polka dots, against her parent wishes she entered Kyoto Art University where she was trained in Nihonga, a traditional Japanese painting style. Opposing her traditional views, she was inspired by abstract impressionism and moved to New York in 1958 during the rise of the avant-garde scene and the Pop-Art movement thus influencing her style to what is today.

  Her art style is very bright and optically charged and never lacks color, in addition to her many dizzy walk-in installations and public sculptures.

  Kusama is also very open about her mental health, traumatized by the despairing conditions of Post-war Japan she’d experienced mental health issues such as obsessive-compulsive behavior and hallucinations since she was a child.

   Her comm plosive use of dots was the result of those terrifying visions, flashes of light, auras or dense fields of dots. Also including flowers that spoke to Kusama, and patterns in fabric that began to come to life multiplying, engulfing and or expunging her. She as if she was “was being obliterated”. She was encouraged to draw and paint to release these oppressive feelings, and now art has become her way to express her mental problems. Her art also allowed her to from her overbearing family and her own mind when she began to hallucinate.
 
  In her 2013 interview with Zac Bayly she talked about her inspiration and influences for her 1954 painting “Flower” “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 spraining my ankle”