'Watermelon' and 'Infinity Mirror Room': Master Yayoi Kusama Passes Away at 97

*This content was translated by AI.

Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese modern art master who dyed the world in polka dots, has passed away. She was 97 years old.

The Yayoi Kusama Museum and Foundation announced on the 27th via an official statement that she died at a hospital in Tokyo on the 14th. The specific cause of death was not disclosed.

Born in 1929 into a wealthy family in Matsumoto, Japan, she uniquely decided to pursue a career as a professional painter from her teenage years in post-war conservative Japanese society. In 1957, she moved to the United States and settled in New York, where she first gained attention for her 'Infinity Nets' series, which featured dense brushstrokes on white backgrounds creating net-like patterns.

Later, she established herself as a pioneer in both pop art and minimalism with her 'Accumulation' series, which covered everyday objects with thousands of phallic-shaped objects. In the late 1960s, she became known as an outcast of the New York art scene by staging naked performances called 'Happenings' with anti-war protest themes.

Returning to Japan in 1973, she suffered from severe hallucinations and panic attacks before voluntarily admitting herself to a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo in 1977. Thereafter, she lived near the hospital for the rest of her life while continuing her creative work.

Having published several novels and poetry collections, she began showcasing her 'Infinity Mirror Room' installations again from the late 1990s, featuring rooms filled with mirrors that endlessly reflect or covered entirely in polka dots. These works later became blockbuster exhibitions where visitors had to queue for hours at museums around the world just to enter for a mere 45 seconds, establishing them as the original 'must-see photo spots.'

As interest in Japanese modern art and pop culture grew in the 21st century, the value of her works soared. In 2014, at a Christie's auction, one piece from her 1960 'Infinity Nets' series sold for $7.1 million, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a work by a living female artist. She herself referred to this phenomenon as 'Kusamania.'

She collaborated with various brands ranging from cosmetics to automobiles, and her signature look of polka-dotted clothing and fluorescent-colored bob wigs became a symbol in itself. In 2006, she received the Premium Imperial Award, an international art prize sponsored by the Japanese imperial family, and in 2017, a museum bearing her name opened in Tokyo.

In 2017, controversy arose when it was revealed through a media outlet that her 2002 autobiography contained multiple instances of racist expressions demeaning Black people. The issue resurfaced in connection with her solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2023, at which time she issued a public apology.

Kusama once expressed her artistic world in her autobiography as follows: "Bring Picasso, bring Matisse, bring anyone. I will take on them all with a single polka dot." Information regarding her surviving family members has not yet been disclosed.

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*This content was translated by AI.