Vale to an extraordinary artist: Yayoi Kusama

(Credit: the Tate Galleries video channel.)

"I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live." - Yayoi Kusama, 2012.

"Ms. Kusama said she was inspired by hallucinatory visions she had experienced since childhood, in which she could hear the voices of flowers, pumpkins and dogs. Art served as a form of therapy: She wrestled with many of the vivid images in her head by re-creating them in her art, and at times was said to paint without interruption for 40 to 50 hours straight."

"She wrote in her 2002 autobiography that she encountered her first pumpkin — a human head-sized orb that spoke to her — at a seed farm she visited with her grandfather, and was drawn to its "generous unpretentiousness" and "spiritual balance." Violets, she said, also seemed to speak to her, and patterns overwhelmed her vision."

- Two excerpts from Juno Carmel's excellent article, Yayoi Kusama, whose art evoked hallucinatory wonder, dies at 97.

Inset right is a photo of Kusama, aged 10, found in another great article, Yayoi Kusama & Pumpkins -  What you should know, where all photos in this post were sourced.

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When I heard Yayoi Kusama (inset left) died earlier this month (August 14), I was saddened for 2 reasons: the loss of an extraordinary artist, and my inability to finish the Feminist Art & Empowerment series (2018-2019) in which she would have appeared. There is certainly a lot more information about her on the web now, however, and much more of her  work to be found. She was a true Energizer Bunny... she never stopped.

One thing that is new to me is her strange 

collection of "hallucinations" and her ability to communicate with animals, pumpkins and flowers... "and patterns of stones from the nearby river which would come to life in her waking dreams."

 In ways she reminds me of another "obsessed" Japanese artist: Sakiko Ide, who was also born in the 1920s, survived WWII, lived in New York,* and had her own strange relationship with flowers... specifically the variety held by the young Kusama above, chrysanthemums. Both also attempted suicide; tragically, Ide (allegedly) succeeded. Happily, Kusama did not. Instead, after several suicide attempts she checked herself into a Japanese psychiatric hospital in 1975. and made it her permanent residence, renting a studio nearby where she continued making her art till her last breath.

A Dream I Dreamed, installation, Yayoi Kusama, 2014

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* A humorous anecdote about Kusama in New York (from Carmel's article:

          

"During her 1968 "Nixon Orgy" in Lower Manhattan, Ms. Kusama bluntly offered to have sex with the president-elect if he would call for a ceasefire. 'Anatomic explosions are better than atomic explosions,' she announced in leaflets distributed on the street."