Yayoi Kusama: The Modern Alice in Wonderland

Being a pioneer in the minimalism and feminist art movement, Yayoi Kusama is constantly pushing boundaries in the realm of culture and art. Every element in Kusama’s artwork, such as repetition, pattern and accumulation, questions the viewers to rethink social and political norms of society in the hopes that it would inspire change to gender equality. Her installation, Walking Piece, serves as an exemplary example of dissolving boundaries between human, art and environment. Dressed in a traditional pink kimono and holding an umbrella decorated with traditional Japanese flowers, Kusama wanders around the city of New York against a grey sea of houses. This performance, through the association of …show more content…
As a child, she has experience physical abuse from her mother, leading her to suffer from visual and aural hallucinations and severe obsessive, suicidal thoughts. At the age of ten, “Kusama was already producing pencil sketches featuring dots and a net-like motif. Even a portrait of her mother, whom she hated for her strictness and prudish values, is covered in dots as though she were suffering from chicken pox” (Pilling, 2012). In 1948, Kusama left her home to study Nihonga, a style in Japanese painting, in Kyoto. However, she didn’t particularly enjoy the formal style and the structured thinking of Nihonga that was imposed on her. Fascinated by the world of surrealism and avant-garde movement, Kusama states in her autobiography that Georgia O’Keeffe, best known as the Mother of American Modernism, was the reason she decided to begin her career in New York. “It was to her that I wrote of my desire to go to America at all costs. I enclosed several of my watercolors, even as I told myself I was mad to think she might ever reply” (Kusama, 2011). By the mid-1960s, Kusama established her fame through her groundbreaking exhibitions and naked happenings, where Kusama would draw polka dots on naked bodies of recruits. By 1973, depressed by the media backlash, Kusama returned to Japan and took a permanent residence in the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally …show more content…
In Kusama’s case, she is viewed as an anomaly in the traditional Japanese society. As illustrated earlier, Kusama’s involvement with feminist art is what alienates her from a traditional Japanese woman. “Kusama questions her culture by the nude portrayal of a woman in her works often because she was taught that sex is dirty, something you have to hide” (Guiberson, 2012). Despite being a foreign artist, Kusama not only does not follow a systematic approach to creating avant-garde arts, but she exploits art styles occurring around her to express her individuality. “By debunking the Surrealist fraternity, by disavowing any involvement with aesthetic theory, by remaining engrossed in herself to the point of being unreceptive to influence, Kusama chose to be a heretic, rather than to have her work anointed by the Surrealists or any other group” (Munroe, 1989). Through her self-exploration in art, Kusama does not get obsessed with the idea of being associated with one single art movement, as she believes categorization is a symbol of authority and narrow-mindedness. Hence, by refusing to be labeled, Kusama was not particularly favored by Japanese art critics, who view her as too independent compared to a common Japanese