Infinity Performance, Orez Gallery in the Hague, 1965
[Image from here.]
The January 2025 Art In Medicine topic is about Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama..
Lucinda Bennett, the Medical Librarian at Ascension St Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, MD, publishes a regular series on Art in Medicine and The Health Humanities.
It's only 1-2 pages with gorgeous images, so it won't take you long to read
... and just might enrich your life.
Yayoi Kusama
In the mid 20th century, the post-modern and
counter-culture movements were in full swing.
Society was reckoning with great change, in
nearly every aspect of American life the status
quo was being questioned with great scrutiny.
Visual arts were no exception. During this time,
a unique artist emerged, she would later go on
to become the top selling living female artist in
the world. Yayoi Kusama found success later in
life, a life that has been full of hardship and
mental health crises and many hospitalizations.
“Born in 1929 in the small city of Matsumoto,
Kusama was the youngest of four children in a
middle-class family. Although her father bought
her art supplies, her mother viewed painting an
unsuitable pursuit for a girl and ripped up her
pictures. Around age 7, Kusama began hearing
pumpkins, violets, and dogs talking to her. She
often saw auras around objects and bursts of radiance along the mountainous skyline that made objects around her flash and glitter.” (Psychiatry Online) Although she did attend art school in Japan, the strict educational system was not a match for the aspiring artist, nor was the declining home life perpetuated by her parents. After her first solo exhibition a visitor, who turned out to be a noted psychiatrist, not only wrote a paper on Kusama’s
mental state and artistic ability, but encouraged her to escape the abusive situation at home lest her condition
worsen. Taking a chance at corresponding with one of her idols, Kusama wrote to American painter Georgia
O’Keefe, who did write back and shared the young artist’s work with her contacts. By the 1950s she had moved to
the United States, first on the west coast and eventually to New York City. There she continued to expand her
artistic output to performance art, paintings, sewn soft sculptures and in time her now famous infinity rooms.
However, success as an artist can be difficult no matter how hard one tries, even with support and talent.
Especially so when said artist is a woman, an immigrant, and trying to make the rent on time.
“The New York art world was male dominated to the extent that even many of the female dealers didn’t want to
exhibit women. Although Kusama won the praise of Donald Judd, a notable artist and critic, in an early review of
her work, and even though the painter Frank Stella was an admirer, real success eluded her. A fact made all the
more agonising as she was forced to watch her male peers gain recognition for her ideas. Claes Oldenburg was
‘inspired’ by her fabric phallic couch to start creating the soft sculpture for which he would become world famous,
while Andy Warhol would copy her innovative idea of creating repeated images of the sole exhibit in her One
Thousand Boats installation for his Cow Wallpaper.
But worse was to come. In 1965 Kusama created the world’s first mirrored-room environment, a precursor to her
Infinity Mirror Rooms, at the Castellane Gallery in New York. As man prepared to head for the moon, Kusama had
uniquely grasped the public’s growing awareness of infinity. She confronted them with this unnerving concept
through a seemingly endless environment. Only a few months later, in a complete change of artistic direction,
avant-garde artist Lucas Samaras exhibited his own mirrored installation at the far more prestigious Pace Gallery.
Distraught and dejected, Kusama threw herself from the window of her apartment.” (BBC)
Psychiatry and mental health services as we know it today were not available to patients in the 1960s. Although
Kusama survived her suicide attempt and continually sought care, the circumstances which sent her to hospitals in
the first place did not improve. She went in and out of admission in between working on new art for some time. Eventually though, it became too much and the difficult decision to go back to Japan came upon her. This choice,
although it would take years to bear fruit, would lead to the global renown which is now attached to Kusama and
her work. Specifically the dots and pumpkins and the theme of infinity, would mature after this period.
Pumpkin Sculpture
Hirshhorn Museum, 2016
“Mental health issues prompted her to return to Tokyo and in
1977, she voluntarily checked herself into a mental institution.
Today Kusama still lives in the institution, which is just down
the street from her art studio. She travels back and forth
between both locations and continues to create her signature
pieces. The idea that everything in our world is obliterated
and comprised of infinite dots, from the human cell to the
stars that make up the cosmic universe, is the theme of her
art. As Kusama describes herself, “with just one polka dot,
nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there is the sun, the
moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us
live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the
universe.” (Smithsonian)
In the 21st century, Kusama sells works of art with pricetags
in the millions. Collectors scramble to acquire any number of
her pieces and fans line up well in advance for her shows.
This writer had the opportunity to attend such a show at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. in 2017, braving long lines with fellow grad students for the chance to enter any of the assembled infinity rooms. Said rooms each had an attendant with a stopwatch, patrons were only allowed 90 seconds or so before the next in line was ushered in due to the popularity of the exhibit. When confronted with a seemingly endless landscape of color and
texture, the worries of the mind really did vanish, at least in the moment. That pinpoint of human perception
Kusama first identified with the space race in the 1960s has never really gone away, we are but one part of a
mesmerizing whole. And that is certainly a familiar topic in any conversation regarding mental health and the study
of psychiatry.
“It was a highly-anticipated moment in Kusama’s journey as an artist, and visitors responded, queuing up and
waiting for hours to enter the museum to experience the otherworldly realms for themselves. The museum reports
that nearly 160,000 people experienced the show, bumping its annual visitor record to 475,000.” (Smithsonian)
In 2017 a documentary film about Kusama’s life was released, she was by then pushing 90 years old and still
making art, attending gallery shows and opening exhibitions across the globe. And, openly addressing the
alleviation of stigma when discussing mental health issues.
“As a new documentary reveals, the road to success was a long and winding one that tested the artist’s drive,
resiliency, and, ultimately, her sanity. Kusama – Infinity, directed by Heather Lenz, takes an unvarnished look at the
artist’s mental health struggles, from her chilling spoken word piece Manhattan Suicide Addict Poem from 1973 to
Kusama’s point-blank remembrances about throwing herself out the window of her New York City apartment.
Thankfully, the documentary ends on a positive note: “Now that my life is in its last stage, I am putting all of my
energy into my art,” said Kusama. “I want to live forever.” (ArtNet)
References:
Yayoi Kusama’s extraordinary survival story
Artist Describes How Art Saved Her Life
Celebrating the Eternal Legacy of Artist Yayoi Kusama
5 Things We Learned About Yayoi Kusama From the New Documentary About Her Extraordinary Life
Reprinted with the generous permission of Ms. Bennett.
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