Kusama Yayoi

Avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama's matchless creativity and originality have been captivating the world since she moved from Matsumoto, her hometown in Nagano, Japan, to the USA in 1958. In the last ten years alone, her retrospective exhibitions in four major European and American museums, including Tate Modern, London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, have seen record attendance. Kusama has continuously innovated and re-invented her style. Well-known for her repeating dot patterns, her art encompasses an astonishing variety of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, performance and immersive installation. It ranges from works on paper featuring intense semi-abstract imagery, to soft sculpture known as 'Accumulations', to her 'Infinity Net' paintings, made up of carefully repeated arcs of paint built up into large patterns. This comprehensive publication, originally published to accompany a sell-out exhibition at Matsumoto City Museum of Art, offers a comprehensive overview of Kusama's entire career, including works from her youth, when she indulged in drawing in order to escape from her hallucinations; paintings made when she was based in New York, including 'Infinity Nets' and 'Polka Dots'; works from the1980s and 1990s, when she participated in the Venice Biennale; and last but not least, the ongoing large-scale series 'My Eternal Soul'. The plates are in chronological order and followed by detailed captions.

In her most personal book to date, Yayoi Kusama brings us into her private world through poetic recollections, giving insight into her creative process and the essential role language plays in her work and daily life. With a new focus on Kusama's use of language, this book gives an impressive overview of her poetry, which the artist creates alongside her work in other media. Highlighting the importance of language to Kusama, the book draws special attention to the captivating poetic titles of her paintings, such as in I WOULD LIKE TO SHOW YOU THE INFINITE SPLENDOR OF STARDUST IN THE UNIVERSE and FIGURE OF THE MIDNIGHT DARKNESS OF THE UNIVERSE THAT I DEDICATED ALL MY HEART. These visionary titles are a quintessential part of Kusama's eye-catching artworks, but also hold their own as unique aphorisms and appealing statements of cosmic spirituality. The poetry collected here touches on Kusama's personal triumphs and trials, her human ideals, and her heroic pursuit of art and peace above all else. Centered around EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE, Kusama's acclaimed exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2019, this book features more than 300 pages of new paintings, sculptures, and Infinity Mirrored Rooms. It also includes photographs of Kusama over time, offering a unique visual timeline of this iconic artist.

A major career survey of Yayoi Kusama, one of the most widely admired and popular artists of our time. Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now is the most comprehensive survey of the artist’s work to date, profiling an artist who has achieved truly global acclaim in her lifetime. In a wide-ranging career spanning seven decades and multiple media, she established profound connections with audiences around the world. Emerging at the forefront of artistic experimentation in Asia in the mid-20th century, Kusama soon became a central figure in the New York art scene of the 1960s. Now in her nineties, Kusama continues to communicate her highly personal and spiritual world view through her art. The volume is structured around six thematic sections, “Infinity,” “Accumulation,” “The Biocosmic,” “Radical Connectivity,” “Death,” and “Joy of Life,” each of which is intended to elucidate the aesthetic and philosophical concerns at the heart of the artist’s oeuvre. This book features selections from Kusama’s hitherto unpublished writings, as well as correspondence with Georgia O’Keeffe, an interview with critic and curator Yoshie Yoshida, and a roundtable discussion from leading curators and Kusama experts. Also included are essays exploring different aspects of her practice, and a detailed illustrated chronology that places her life’s work in context. Appealing not only to those already familiar with Kusama and her work, but also to anyone discovering it for the first time, this monograph reveals an artist who, while shaped by international artistic currents, remains deeply connected to the traditions and culture of her native Japan. 347 color illustrations