Yayoi Kusama, who transformed personal anguish into infinite wonder through polka dots and mirrored chambers, died on August 14 in Tokyo at the age of 97. Born into wartime Japan and haunted from childhood by hallucinations she could not silence, she chose to paint them rather than flee them — and in doing so, gave the world a new way of seeing itself inside the cosmos. Her life was a testament to the strange alchemy by which suffering, when met with relentless creative will, can become something that multiplies endlessly outward.
Yayoi Kusama, visionary artist of infinite dots and dreamscapes, dies at 97
Kusama endured lifelong hallucinations and mental health crises that required psychiatric hospitalization for decades, yet she channeled these experiences into transformative artistic expression.
You can't eradicate violence by using more violence
Mark
Why do you think the polka dots stuck with people so much? They're simple enough.
Mimi
Because they weren't simple at all. They were her way of saying something about obsession, about how you can repeat something endlessly and it becomes almost meditative. The dots were her hallucinations made visible and manageable.
Mark
She lived in a psychiatric hospital for decades. How did she keep making art?
Mimi
The art wasn't separate from the hospital. It was the reason she could be there. She needed the structure, the safety. And across the street was her studio. She had a place to work, to transform what was happening in her mind into something others could enter.
Mark
The infinity rooms—people line up for hours to get inside them for a few minutes. What's that about?
Mimi
It's the experience of losing yourself. You step in and suddenly you're everywhere and nowhere at once. For someone who spent her life battling hallucinations, she created spaces where disorientation becomes beautiful instead of terrifying.
Mark
She wrote to Georgia O'Keeffe as a young artist. Did that letter change everything?
Mimi
It gave her permission to try. O'Keeffe didn't promise success. She just said it was hard and worth doing anyway. That mattered.
Mark
What do you think she'd say about her work being on lipstick tubes and phone cases now?
Mimi
I think she'd be pleased. She always said art was a necessity, not a luxury. If her dots could be with people every day, in ordinary moments, that was the whole point.
Le Pouls
- Kusama's hallucinations were not a burden she overcame — they were the raw material she spent a lifetime transmuting into art, from childhood sketchbooks to globally celebrated infinity rooms.
- In 1960s New York, she disrupted a male-dominated art world with naked happenings, open letters to Nixon, and rooms so disorienting that viewers lost all sense of where they ended and the universe began.
- Recognition arrived unevenly and unjustly — she was exoticized, underpaid, and overlooked even as her innovations reshaped contemporary art around her.
- In the early 1970s, she returned to Japan and entered a psychiatric institution, yet continued creating from a studio across the street, refusing to let the boundary between illness and art ever fully close.
- By her final decades, her dots had migrated onto Louis Vuitton bags and Lancôme lipsticks, her museum had opened in Tokyo, and the world had finally caught up to what she had always known: that repetition, infinity, and a single polka dot could hold the entire cosmos.
Yayoi Kusama, who transformed personal anguish into infinite wonder through polka dots and mirrored chambers, died on August 14 in Tokyo at the age of 97. Born into wartime Japan and haunted from childhood by hallucinations she could not silence, she chose to paint them rather than flee them — and in doing so, gave the world a new way of seeing itself inside the cosmos. Her life was a testament to the strange alchemy by which suffering, when met with relentless creative will, can become something that multiplies endlessly outward.
Yayoi Kusama died on August 14 at a Tokyo hospital at the age of 97, leaving behind one of the most singular bodies of work in contemporary art. Her representative confirmed she died of multiple organ failure. Her artistic language — dots, mirrors, repetition, light — was simple on its surface and staggering in effect. The infinity rooms she invented enclosed viewers in mirrored chambers filled with twinkling lights that seemed to extend without end, dissolving the boundary between self and space. "Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos," she once wrote, and that philosophy ran through everything she made.
She grew up in Matsumoto, Japan, where childhood was shadowed by wartime labor and vivid hallucinations that frightened and consumed her. She began drawing the visions as a way to survive them. Her mother confiscated her supplies; she found more. After discovering Georgia O'Keeffe's work in a secondhand bookstore, she wrote to the American artist, who wrote back — cautioning that the path was hard, but urging her forward.
In the late 1950s, Kusama arrived in New York and planted herself at the center of the avant-garde. She staged happenings where she painted polka dots on the bodies of anti-war protesters, and wrote an open letter to President Nixon offering to sleep with him if he would end the Vietnam War. Her infinity rooms — one filled with phalluses, another pulsing with lights synchronized to the Beatles — left viewers mesmerized and unmoored. Recognition, however, came slowly. The art world was male-dominated, and Kusama was further exoticized as an "Oriental" figure, a role she navigated by cultivating a deliberate public persona while continuing to struggle financially and psychologically.
In the early 1970s, she returned to Japan and admitted herself to a psychiatric institution, where she would live for the rest of her life. From a studio directly across the street, she never stopped working. Major museums mounted retrospectives; a dedicated museum opened in Tokyo in 2017; her designs appeared on luxury goods sold around the world. She insisted until the end that making art was not ambition but survival — a way of enduring her own mind, and of showing others their place in an infinite universe.
Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese artist whose polka-dotted pumpkins and mirrored infinity rooms became some of the most recognizable artworks of the past half-century, died on August 14 at a Tokyo hospital. She was 97. Her representative, David Zwirner, said she died of multiple organ failure.
Kusama's artistic vocabulary was deceptively simple: dots, repetition, mirrors, light. But the effect was overwhelming. Her infinity net paintings—canvases covered in thousands of tiny brushstrokes arranged in dotted patterns—were meant to represent her obsession with the infinite. The polka-dotted pumpkins, rendered in eye-catching oranges and blacks, sat in galleries and public spaces like cheerful monuments to abundance. The infinity rooms, perhaps her most famous invention, were enclosed chambers with mirrored walls and twinkling lights that seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions. Viewers stepped inside and found themselves multiplied infinitely, their sense of space dissolved. "Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos," she once wrote, capturing the philosophy that animated all her work.
She grew up in Matsumoto, a town nestled at the foot of mountains in central Japan, where her family ran a seed nursery. During World War II, she and other children worked long hours in a parachute factory. From childhood, Kusama experienced hallucinations—vivid, intrusive visions that frightened her. She began drawing them in sketchbooks as a way to process the fear and shock. Her mother, disapproving of her art-making, would confiscate her supplies. But Kusama persisted. After discovering a book of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings in a secondhand bookstore, she wrote to the American artist asking for guidance. O'Keeffe wrote back, warning that making a living as an artist in the United States was difficult but encouraging her to try anyway and to show her work to anyone willing to look.
In the late 1950s, Kusama moved to New York and found her place in the city's avant-garde scene. She was 28 when the Vietnam War prompted her to stage public happenings where she painted polka dots on the naked bodies of fellow protesters. She wrote an open letter to President Richard Nixon proposing they have sex if he would end the war. "As we soar through the heavens, we'll paint each other with polka dots, lose our egos in timeless eternity, and finally discover the naked truth: You can't eradicate violence by using more violence," she wrote. Richard Castellane, who represented her as a dealer in the 1960s, recalled the shock her work provoked. He remembered one infinity room filled with phalluses and another packed with blinking colored lights synchronized to a Beatles soundtrack. "The machine would be setting off these lights in almost like a machine-gun rhythm," he told NPR in 2017. "The lights would bounce from mirror to mirror to mirror to mirror. You couldn't focus on anything. You had no sense of space because space was infinite." People were mesmerized and overwhelmed. It was entirely new.
Yet recognition came slowly. Curator Mika Yoshitake noted that the art world of that era was heavily male-dominated, and Kusama faced additional barriers. She was exoticized as an Oriental figure, a dynamic she leaned into by wearing kimonos and cultivating a distinctive public persona. Despite her artistic innovations, she struggled financially and continued to suffer from hallucinations and panic attacks. In the early 1970s, she returned to Japan and admitted herself to a psychiatric institution, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
Her international reputation, however, continued to grow. Major museums including the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn and the Tate in London exhibited her work. In 2017, the Yayoi Kusama Museum opened in Tokyo. From a studio across the street from the psychiatric hospital where she lived, Kusama continued creating art well into the 2000s. Her designs appeared on cellphone cases, Lancôme lipsticks, and Louis Vuitton products. She was adamant throughout her life that making art was not a choice but a necessity—a way of surviving her own mind, and a way of helping others see their place in an infinite universe.
Citations marquantes
Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos— Yayoi Kusama
The lights would bounce from mirror to mirror to mirror to mirror. You couldn't focus on anything. You had no sense of space because space was infinite.— Richard Castellane, her 1960s dealer, describing an infinity room
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