Get ready to step into the vibrant, fun and mesmerizing world of the one and only and legendary Yayoi Kusama, explore her eighty years of life and work. From her early days of work on paper and avant-garde performances to large-scale paintings and sculptures; corridors; heavy patterning; disorienting spaces and her immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms - My Heart Filled with Sparkling Lights has its world premier in Melbourne. Not forgetting by not missing out on her globally renowned trademark polka-dot pumpkins and flowers sculptures that have captivated so many of us worldwide which are key to transforming art into an unforgettable experience in the 21st century. From Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 to you, then, now and future, the sky is (her) the limit and you will truly be inspired. mylifestylenews writes.
It is all happening since December 2024, just days before Christmas, when the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) put on one of the biggest shows ever staged in the southern hemisphere by celebrating the illustrious career of the living legend and iconic contemporary and controversial artist Yayoi Kusama with a world-premiere blockbuster exhibition documenting the artist’s career progression with insights into the motifs, themes and personal experiences, including the global unveiling of her most recent immersive kaleidoscopic infinity mirror room, alongside newly commissioned texts chronologically and specially for Australian audiences. 
Comprising nearly 200 artworks, the creative and retrospective exhibition will take you to the length and breadth of Kusama’s multidisciplinary practice through a diverse display of immersive installations, painting, performance, collage, fashion and writing, dancing pumpkin and more, with many drawn from the artist’s personal collection including important early works that rarely travel.
Kusama’s singular and idiosyncratic use of patterns and symbols to create immersive, thought-provoking and intensely personal works of art that transcend languages and borders, have garnered extraordinary attention.
The living artist has also made significant and pioneering contributions to key art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, including minimalism, pop art and feminist art in the United states, Europe and Japan that led to countless sell-out exhibitions over decades.
Born in the regional Japanese city of Matsumoto in 1929, she grew up on a plant nursery and seed farm, where she revelled in the nature surrounding her. Yayoi Kusama’s personal expression was indelibly shaped by her childhood experiences, including hallucinations that overwhelmed her sense of self. She has explained these visions as part of an obsessional neurosis that has driven her to create art for nearly nine decades and is still on going. 
Before you even arrive at the NGV, trees along St Kilda road at the Melbourne Art Precinct are wrapped around with white polka dots on pink fabric that you can’t miss.
Upon entering the gallery, the indoor <Narcissus Garden> is a definitive work in Kusama’s career and an important acquisition for the NGV collection, which references the Greek myth of Narcissus, who was so captivated by his own reflection in a body of water that it led to his drowning consisting of 1,400 stainless steel spheres, each 30 cm in diameter which produces a visual landscape that infinitely reflects and envelopes visitors as they explore the installation and gives you the power to see your own reflection and, in turn, be captivated. It also connects the past with the present, signifying the enduring impact of Kusama’s steadfast artistic vision. 
Presented across the entire ground floor, the comprehensive exhibition is divided into Part I and Part II. Part I features mainly her Early Years of work that are lesser known from her experimental period postwar Japan as well as her time spent and avant-garde contributions in New York in the 1960s, through to her return to Japan in 1973 and subsequently re-emergence back to the world stage. The later part of the exhibition is more focused on her recent works together with fashion and those works that stunned the world stage for your enjoyment. 
Kusama aged about ten, c.1939
<EARLY YEARS>At the age of ten, Kusama started visualizing her experiences in drawings, initiating some of her most enduring artistic themes. After briefly studying traditional Japanese painting in Kyoto during the late 1940s, Kusama returned to Matsumoto, She was encouraged to pursue art through her correspondence with the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
During this time, Kusama produced experimental paintings in vast numbers that she exhibited in her home town prefecture and Tokyo. 
“From a very young age I used to carry my sketchbook down to the seed-harvesting grounds. I would sit among beds of violets, lost in thought. One day I suddenly looked up to find that each and every violet had its own individual human-like facial expression, and to my astonishment they were all talking to me.
Get ready to step into the vibrant, fun and mesmerizing world of the one and only and legendary Yayoi Kusama, explore her eighty years of life and work. From her early days of work on paper and avant-garde performances to large-scale paintings and sculptures; corridors; heavy patterning; disorienting spaces and her immersive Infinity Mirror Rooms - My Heart Filled with Sparkling Lights has its world premier in Melbourne. Not forgetting by not missing out on her globally renowned trademark polka-dot pumpkins and flowers sculptures that have captivated so many of us worldwide which are key to transforming art into an unforgettable experience in the 21st century. From Yayoi Kusama 草間彌生 to you, then, now and future, the sky is (her) the limit and you will truly be inspired. mylifestylenews writes.
Kusama’s singular and idiosyncratic use of patterns and symbols to create immersive, thought-provoking and intensely personal works of art that transcend languages and borders, have garnered extraordinary attention.
The voices quickly grew in number and volume, until the sound of them hurt my ears. I had thought that only human beings could speak, so I was surprised that these violets were using words to communicate. They were all like little human faces looking at me. I was so terrified that my legs began shaking.” - Yayoi Kusama. 
By the mid 1950s Kusama’s ambition had outgrown regional Japan and the possibilities on offer in postwar Tokyo. 
In November 1957 she left for United States, with silk kimonos in her bags, American banknotes hidden in her clothing, and some two thousand drawings and paintings.
Kusama arrived in Seattle, and within one month she presented her first solo US exhibition at Dusaane Gallery. Six months later, Kusama moved to New York to pursue her dream of international success.
<NEW YORK>Yayoi Kusama arrived in New York just as the 1950’s were turning into 1960s and a new generation of artists were seeking a corrective to the expressionist painting of the proceeding decade. Her first impression of New York was of “a fierce and violent place”, a “living hell” that was extremely stressful.
Despite those conditions, she persevered, determined to make a name for herself in the art world’s centre. 
Using a repetitive creative process, Kusama painted large canvases that immersed both artist and viewer in an expansive monochromatic field.
From 1963 she extended this interest in self-immersion, or “self-obliteration”, into three dimensions. For her Accumulation sculptures, Kusama covered furniture and found objects with phallus-like fabric forms, a style of sculpture that would continue over the coming decades.
Self-obliteration #1
Self-obliteration #2
Self-obliteration #3
In 1965 and 1966 Kusama presented her first infinity mirror rooms at New York’s Castellance Gallery. These installations, which immersed visitors in 360-degree reflections, took Kusama a step closer to realizing her ambition of losing herself in an endlessly proliferating space.
In 1962, Kusama began to cover everyday items with sewn, stuffed fabric forms and paint to create sculptures she called Aggregations or Accumulations.
Her desire to make these works arose from what she has described as “a deep, driving compulsion to realize in visible form the repetitive image inside of me.”
Kusama described the fabric form as “Phalli”, which she obsessively created as a means of dealing with her fear of sex. Through mass reproduction, the phallus is robbed of its power so that it becomes impotent, even amusing.
Paired with overtly domestic items like armchairs, women’s shoes and kitchen utensils, this also connects to Kusama’s experience as a young Japanese woman fighting for her place within the white, male-dominated art world of the 1960s.
In 1963, at the Gertrude Stein Gallery, New York, Kusama presented her first room-sized installation. Titled Aggregation: One Thousand Boats Show, this installation included one of Kusama’s Accumulations, a wooden rowboat with oars covered with her distinctive stuff fabric shapes and painted white.
The room housing the rowboat was papered with repetitive images of the sculpture. 
The important early exhibition introduced what would become a signature of Kusama’s artistic practice: the extension of repetitive motifs to create an all-encompassing environment. Kusama took the installation to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1965, after which it entered the museum’s collection. Since then, Kusama has created further iterations of the phallus-covered rowboat in different colours, including the nearby silver work from 1982, Walking on the Sea of Death.
At Castellance Gallery in 1965, Kusama debuted Infinity Mirror Room - Phalli’s Field (or Floor Show), A mirror-clad room with a floor of white-and-red polka-dotted fabric forms.
On entering the room, visitors see themselves reflected to infinity within this polka-dotted field of phalli. For her second Castellance Exhibition in 1966, she created Peep Show/Endless Love Show, a hexagonal room entirely lined with mirrors, which reflected a repeating pattern created by coloured lightbulbs installed on the ceiling.
Unable to physically enter this room, visitors instead peered into its technicolour universe through two peepholes.
With her ingenious use of space and materials, in particular lights and mirrors, and a strategy of repetition, these three rooms took Kusama closer to expressing her vision of an infinite universe.
<KUSAMA FASHION COMPANY>
Kusama regularly wore outfits of her own design, including the nearby pink-and-white tunic dress, during the many happenings and photo shoots she staged in the late 1960s.
Kusama regularly wore outfits of her own design, including the nearby pink-and-white tunic dress, during the many happenings and photo shoots she staged in the late 1960s.
Beyond her personal wardrobe, Kusama crafted radical garments that aligned with the spirit of the sexual liberation movement. Some designs featured her handpainted net motif while others had strategically placed holes that revealed parts of the wearer’s naked body.
To extend the reach of her fashion designs beyond the art world and make them commercially viable, she established Kusama Fashion Company in 1969. The same year, she launched a ready-to-wear collection. With garments that ranged from relatively conventional styles to radical designs.
To extend the reach of her fashion designs beyond the art world and make them commercially viable, she established Kusama Fashion Company in 1969. The same year, she launched a ready-to-wear collection. With garments that ranged from relatively conventional styles to radical designs.
Kusama’s clothes were stocked by retailers in New York of Sixth Avenue and West Eight Street.
<Orgy Dress> 2002 Cotton
Kusama designed her first Orgy and See Through dresses in 1968. These large, sack-like garments were covered in circular cut-outs, exposing parts of the wearer’s naked body. Each dress could accommodate several bodies, encouraging intimate contact.
In 1969 media release, Kusama declared her experimental fashions to be part of the “Holy War against the establishment.” The radical nature of Kusama’s designs contributed to, and were informed by, the 1960’s counterculture movement of sexual liberation.
<Danny Le Rue (Caged)>
These “cage” portraits are unique within Kusuma’s artistic practice of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which otherwise centred on performance, activism and fashion design. The paintings are part of a series of portraits depicting famous female figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Mata Hari, Sharon Tate, Jacqueline Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and the drag performer Danny La Rue, Kusama’s choice to depict these figures under constrictive wire netting might suggest a desire to understand the complex experience of celebrity.
These “cage” portraits are unique within Kusuma’s artistic practice of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which otherwise centred on performance, activism and fashion design. The paintings are part of a series of portraits depicting famous female figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Mata Hari, Sharon Tate, Jacqueline Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor and the drag performer Danny La Rue, Kusama’s choice to depict these figures under constrictive wire netting might suggest a desire to understand the complex experience of celebrity.
In the late 1960s, the artist’s protests and happenings had become tabloid fodder in the United States and Japan, drawing criticism for their provocative nature.
Kusama’s work undertook a major shift in the second half of the 1960s. Between 1967 and 1969 she presented roughly seventy-five “happenings” - socially and politically charged events linked to the broader countercultural movements of the period, including sexual liberation and anti-Vietnam War protests.
Most of Kusama’s happenings took place at prominent public locations throughout New York, including Central Park, Trinity Church and the Brooklyn Bridge. Participants in these public interventions were often naked, and Kusama - the self-professed “High Priestess of Polka Dots” - would use her paintbrush to “obliterate” their bodies with polka dots.
Kusama carefully documented this experimental period in her career. Happenings, film screenings and other ephemeral events were announced with press releases and captured in photographs.
Her fashion designs of the period were similarly recorded in photo shoots, and advertisements for her fashions were published in men’s magazines. These documents form an important part of the artist’s personal archive.
<RETURNING TO JAPAN>
In 1973 Kusama moved back to Japan after nearly sixteen years living in the United States. Around this time, she experienced the death of several significant people in her life, including her father in 1974. A period of introspection and psychological breakdowns followed, leading Kusama to choose, in 1977, to live with regular access to psychiatric care.
In 1973 Kusama moved back to Japan after nearly sixteen years living in the United States. Around this time, she experienced the death of several significant people in her life, including her father in 1974. A period of introspection and psychological breakdowns followed, leading Kusama to choose, in 1977, to live with regular access to psychiatric care.
She eventually established a separate studio, but for a time her working space was limited, so she began to create small-scale collages. These detailed and intimate works combined cut-out photographs and illustrations, often with insect, marine or botanical motifs and her characteristic drawn and painted nets, webs, and dots.
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