Yayoi Kusama, Who Captivated the World with Her Pumpkins, Dies at 97

[Financial News, Tokyo = Reporter Seo Hye-jin] Yayoi Kusama, Japan's leading avant-garde artist who left an unmatched mark on the global contemporary art world with her vivid polka dots and giant pumpkin sculptures, has died at the age of 97.
According to Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) and Nihon Keizai Shimbun on the 27th, Kusama died on the 14th at a hospital in Tokyo from multiple organ failure.
Born in 1929 in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan, Kusama built her own artistic universe by turning the hallucinations and auditory hallucinations she experienced as a child into paintings. After holding her first solo exhibition in 1952, she moved to the United States in 1957 and worked mainly in New York.
She went on to present the "Infinity Nets" series, in which canvases were covered with repetitive net-like patterns, as well as "Soft Sculpture" works made by stuffing cloth with cotton, and installations using mirrors and lighting. In the late 1960s, she staged "happenings" in which polka dots were painted on naked men and women, challenging conventional morality and social order.
After returning to Japan in 1973, she remained highly active across painting, sculpture, installation art, novels, and poetry. In particular, her pumpkin sculptures covered in bright polka dots became symbolic of Kusama's work. The outdoor sculpture "Pumpkin" installed on Naoshima Island in Kagawa Prefecture has become one of the island's signature attractions.
Kusama represented Japan at the Venice Biennale, the world's major international art exhibition, in 1993. She began to be recognized as an international master after retrospective exhibitions were held in 1998 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and other venues. A traveling retrospective that toured major museums in Europe and the United States, including Tate Modern, from 2011 sparked a global "Kusama craze." The exhibition later drew more than 2 million visitors in Latin America, while her 2017 solo show at The National Art Center, Tokyo, attracted about 520,000 people.
She also blurred the boundary between art and fashion through collaborations with luxury brand Louis Vuitton. In 2017, she opened the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and continued creating works until her final years.
Kusama received the French Order of Arts and Letters, Officer, in 2003 and was named a Person of Cultural Merit of Japan in 2009. In 2016, she was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit, Japan's highest honor in the arts and culture field. Beyond her visual art, she also left behind numerous literary works, including novels, poems, and an autobiography.
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