Yayoi Kusama, Polka Dot Art Pioneer, Dies at 97
Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese avant-garde artist whose mesmerizing polka dot paintings, pumpkin sculptures, and immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms made her one of the most popular and influential artists of her generation, has died at the age of 97. Kusama passed away on August 14 at a hospital in Tokyo from multiple organ failure, according to an announcement from her company, Yayoi Kusama Inc.
The announcement, released on Thursday, described Kusama’s extraordinary legacy: “Throughout an extraordinary lifetime devoted entirely to artistic creation, Kusama pursued an internationally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction, and poetry. She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul.”
A Life in Dots
Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, into a wealthy family that managed plant nurseries, Kusama endured an unhappy childhood marked by an abusive mother and a philandering father. At around age 10, she began experiencing vivid hallucinations in which dots and nets would cover the world around her. Her coping mechanism was to draw what she saw, transforming her fear into art.
“I still see hallucinations even now,” she told reporters in 2017, as Al Jazeera reported. “Dots come flying everywhere – on my dress, the floor, things I’m carrying, throughout the house, the ceiling. And I paint them.”
After studying traditional Japanese painting in Kyoto, Kusama rejected an arranged marriage and left for the United States in the late 1950s. In New York, she made her breakthrough with “Infinity Net” paintings — vast fields of impastoed polka dots that stretched across the canvas. She sold her first Infinity Net painting to artists Frank Stella and Donald Judd for $75 in 1962.
Avant-Garde Provocateur
Kusama’s artistic practice extended far beyond painting. She created soft sculptures, staged controversial “happenings” with naked performers painted in polka dots, and was active in anti-war protests. At the 1966 Venice Biennale, she presented her infamous Narcissus Garden — 1,500 reflective balls that she began selling for $2 each before authorities shut the operation down. In 1968, she staged New York’s first “homosexual wedding” in Tribeca and wrote to President Richard Nixon offering to sleep with him in exchange for ending the Vietnam War.
Despite working within the spheres of pop art and minimalism, Kusama was never fully embraced by the Western art establishment. As The Guardian noted, she always maintained that many of her ideas were appropriated by white male artists, including Andy Warhol, while she was written out of art history.
Alexandra Monroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim Museum, explained to CNN Japan that “being a woman, a foreigner of color from a defeated Asian power, and the psychological content of her work, separated her identity from the Western mainstream that wrote the first histories of 1960s avant-garde art.”
Mental Health and Hospital Life
Kusama had long struggled with psychoses and hallucinations. After the death of her close friend Joseph Cornell in 1972 and multiple suicide attempts, she voluntarily checked into a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo in 1977, where she lived for the rest of her life. She walked to a nearby studio each day to work, often from morning until night.
“The only way to fight pain and fear is to make art,” she once said, as reported by VRT NWS. “If art didn’t exist, I would have ended my life long ago.”
Global Superstardom
After a period of relative obscurity in the 1980s, Kusama’s work was re-evaluated from the late 1980s onward. Her 1993 Venice Biennale Japanese Pavilion exhibition marked a turning point. In the 21st century, her immersive installations became global phenomena, attracting massive crowds and becoming perfect Instagram content.
Kusama became the best-selling female artist in the world. Her painting “Untitled (Nets)” (1959) sold for approximately $10.5 million in May 2022, and her works earned a total of $190.5 million at auctions worldwide in 2023 alone, according to Asahi Shimbun. She received Japan’s highest honor for artists, the Order of Culture, in 2016, and the Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Shinjuku, Tokyo in 2017.
Her 2024 exhibition in Australia became the most popular show in the country’s history. She also partnered with fashion house Louis Vuitton for a line of polka-dot handbags and other products, and the 2018 documentary “Kusama: Infinity” chronicled her remarkable life.
A Legacy of Infinity
David Zwirner, the art dealer who represented Kusama for 15 years, said she “was without a doubt the most famous living artist in the world,” as Al Jazeera reported. “Kusama’s art influenced the histories of minimalism, pop art, and performance art.”
Kusama continued painting until her final days. According to Esquire Japan, she was reportedly working on her series “Every Day I Pray for Love” in her hospital room until July 2026, just weeks before her death. Her earlier series “My Eternal Soul,” created from 2009 to 2021, comprises approximately 900 paintings.
A major retrospective of her work is scheduled to open at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam on September 11, 2026, running until January 17, 2027. The exhibition covers over 70 years of her art and features an Infinity Mirror Room.
“Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos,” Kusama once wrote. “I cannot imagine how I will be classified after my death,” she said. “It feels good to be an outsider.”
Her company’s announcement concluded: “We will carry forward Kusama’s wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world.”