Yayoi Kusama, Let's Carry the Flowers, 1998,
Mixed media, 16 1/8 x 24 1/4 x 10 1/4".
© Yayoi Kusama.
Courtesy Robert Miller Gallery.

Yayoi Kusama, internationally renowned Japanese artist, has pursued her principal themes of infinity, self-image, sexuality, and compulsive repetition since she created her first series in the late 1950s, Infinity Nets, paintings covered in flat, "endless" net-like patterns. She describes her work as "obsessional," the direct result of a precarious psychological state. From 1958-73 Kusama lived in New York, where she was well known in the Manhattan art scene of Happenings, sexual revolution and anti-war protest–all featured in her work of that period.

....Kusama’s art, which bridges Eastern and Western traditions, combines elements of 1960s American psychedelia and Pop culture, with the artist’s obsessive all-over patterning. In her installations, (often involving her own performance participation), the artist compulsively covers every surface either in dots, mirrors, or phallus-like protrusions. In 1993 she represented Japan at the XLV Venice Biennale; in 1998-99 a major retrospective exhibition, Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama 1958-1968 toured the United States and Japan (Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.) In January-March 2000, a solo exhibition of her work was presented at the Serpentine Gallery, London.