Yayoi Kusama
born 1929
© Yayoi Kusama
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© Yayoi Kusama
License this image
In Tate Modern
Biography
Yayoi Kusama (草間 彌生, Kusama Yayoi, born 22 March 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, but is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. Her work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan.
Raised in Matsumoto, Kusama trained at the Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts in a traditional Japanese painting style called nihonga. Kusama was inspired, however, by American Abstract Impressionism. She moved to New York City in 1958 and was a part of the New York avant-garde scene throughout the 1960s, especially in the pop-art movement. Embracing the rise of the hippie counterculture of the late 1960s, she came to public attention when she organized a series of happenings in which naked participants were painted with brightly colored polka dots. Since the 1970s, Kusama has continued to create art, most notably installations in various museums around the world.
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Kusama curator’s talk and private view
Curator Frances Morris discusses and explores Yayoi Kusama’s life and work.
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Kusama's Self Obliteration
This is the second of our blog posts relating to Yayoi Kusama and film, and here we present one of ...
TateShots
Yayoi Kusama's Obliteration Room
An entirely white space, furnished as a monochrome living room, is 'obliterated' with multi-coloured stickers
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Yayoi Kusama: 9 February - 5 June 2012
The nine decades of Yayoi Kusama's life have taken her from rural Japan to the New York art scene ...
Features
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Fashion icons of the art world
With London Fashion Week starting today, what better time to pay homage to the fashionistas of the Tate Collection? Take ...
Blog
Kusama's relationship with Joseph Cornell
For an artist who advocated free love during her time as the high priestess of the hippies in late 1960s ...
Blog
Kusama and Experimentation
Yayoi Kusama’s long career has been characterised by a series of reinventions. In her early experiments on paper and ...
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Poetry from Art online anthology 2012: Edited by Pascale Petit
An anthology of poems written by students of Poetry from art: starting poems at Tate Modern, 20 February - 26 March ...
Blog
Kusama and Sprouting
Kusama’s family made their living by cultivating plant seeds and she grew up surrounded by fields full of flowers ...
Blog
Kusama's Infinity Net off-cut
In May 1961, Kusama showed a group of her white Infinity Net paintings in a solo exhibition at the Stephen ...
Blog
Kusama and Peter Gabriel
This is the first of our Kusama film posts, and an interesting link between art and music.
Blog
Kusama and Self-obliteration
Kusama has been called the ‘princess of polka dots’. Throughout her career she has returned to the polka dot as ...
Blog
Kusama and Fashion
In her ninth decade Kusama still displays her keen and unique fashion sense. She has always had an interest in ...
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Kusama and anti-war activism
Yayoi Kusama has always had a strong political conscience, and has been vehemently opposed to war since her teens.
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