Japan’s ‘queen of polka dots’ Yayoi Kusama dies aged 97

Yayoi Kusama took on the whole art world with a ‘single polka dot’, as she put it (Picture: Getty/ Metro) Yayoi Kusama, the zany Japanese artist known for her polka-dot-covered pumpkins and mirrored infinity room illusions, has died aged 97. The Yayoi Kusama Museum and the Yayoi Kusama Foundation announced on Thursday that the artist had died on August 14 at a hospital in Tokyo. Their statement did not specify a cause, but Japanese broadcaster NHK reported it was organ failure. The foundation said: ‘Throughout an extraordinary lifetime devoted entirely to artistic creation, Kusama pursued an internationally acclaimed career as a pioneering avant-garde artist whose creative practice encompassed visual art, performance, fiction, and poetry. ‘She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul.’ Kusama was born in Matsumoto, northwest of Tokyo, in 1929. Japan was deeply conservative in the post-war era, and her determination to become an artist shocked her parents. Sign up for all of the latest stories Start your day informed with Metro's News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens. Kusama left Japan for the US in 1957 (Picture: Sutton Hibbert/Shutterstock) Infinity Mirrored Room The Hope of the Polka Dots Buried in Infinity Will Eternally Cover the Universe at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany (Picture: AFP) To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Despite her family’s pleas not to, she trained in Nihonga, literally ‘Japanese paintings’, a style associated with conservative nationalism. Her work, however, soon became anything but conservative. If you’ve ever scrolled Instagram, there’s a good chance you’ve seen work by Kusama, known to many as the ‘polka dot queen’. From giant yellow pumpkins covered in black spots to paintings made of nothing but tiny curving lines and selfies taken in endlessly reflective mirrored rooms or filled with equally endless pumpkins, her art is al And, more often than not, you’d have just 45 seconds or so to take that selfie – queues to see her installations often stretched for hours. This was all part of what Kusama happily called ‘Kusamania’, which reached such highs that countless tourists fly to Naoshima, an island filled with her works, every year. Her artwork also included phalluses – and a lot of them – sewing thousands of stuffed fabric ones and gluing them to furniture to create installations. She also painted polka dots on completely nude people as part of anti-Vietnam War happenings throughout New York City in the late 1960s. After writing poems and books, she admitted herself to the Seiwa mental hospital in Tokyo in 1977, where she stayed until her death. She said that the comfort and security of the hospital let her breathe for the first time in years, building a small studio nearby. Her work became a cultural phenomenon this century (Picture: AP Photo/Michel Euler) She was known for her love of dotted pumpkins (Picture: AFP) Kusama’s polka dots were splashed on shopping centre installations, notebooks, clothing, beauty products and cars in recent years. But beyond the likes and product deals was her art. Kusama once described the Earth, the moon and the sun as dots, with humans merely ‘tiny dots in the world’ and her art as a way to unite them. She was all too aware of how people viewed her dotty paintings and sculptures, even if all they wanted was a selfie. ‘Bring on Picasso, bring on Matisse,’ she wrote in her 2002 autobiography, Infinity Net, referring to her work in the 1950s and 60s. ‘Bring on anybody! I would stand up to them all with a single polka dot.’ Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. For more stories like this, check our news page. Arrow MORE: Children find bodies of parents in hot tub at rented villa in Spain Arrow MORE: Trainee paramedic with ‘bright future’ found dead in Norfolk house fire Arrow MORE: Hundreds pull giant castle for repairs in epic tug-of-war News Updates Stay on top of the headlines with daily email updates.