Yayoi Kusama: How childhood trauma affects artistic exploration
Hello to all the lovely creatures out there!
Today's post sets a very dynamic tone hopefully for the rest of 2026! I hope you all had fun these holidays and had time to visit friends and family, travel, eat or just stay at home and take it easy! I for sure did all that!
In today's post we'll be talking about Yayoi Kusama's extraodinary story! As always in some posts in this blog, I want to take a deeper dive into how mental health issues, childhood traums etc., have influenced the artistic creations of artists around the world. In today's post we will be exploring Yayoi Kusama's childhood trauma, how it affected her mental health, and how all this translated later into her artwork.
In a general overview before going through with her sotry: Kusama had to endure childhood trauma, and watch as her ideas were brazenly stolen by her male peers, events that led to mental illness and suicide attempts later on. So as a disclaimer if you feel that any of this might be too much for you please do not continue reading, stay safe!
Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan and from a very young age she was determined to be a painter. Her early works reveal what was to become a fanscination with both natural forms and polka dots, the latter allegedly appearing to her in a vision. However, her family were far from supportive. Given the time period Kusama grew up in, it was not a thing for women back in the day to have career ambitions, but rather to get married -especially in Japan by arranged marriage- and have children.
Her mother would use to snatch her drawings before she could finish them, which might explain her obsessive creative driveas she rushes to finish a work before it can be taken from her. Frustrated at her husband's infidelity Kusama's mother would force her to spy on him with his lovers. She found the experience so traumatic that she developed a lifelong aversion to sex. Unsurprisingly, Kusama began to think of a means of escaping her stifling home environment. After getting a response from Georia O'Keefer, who she was admiring greatly, she decided to come to the US and exhibit her work there.
At the time Kusama spoke very little English, and it was prohibited to send money from Japan to the US. Undaunted, she sewed dollar bills into her kimono and set off, determined to make her name in the world. It was not to be that easy. The New York art world was male dominated to the extent that even many of the female dealers didn't want to exhibit women. Although Kusama won the praise of Donald Judd, a notable artist and critic, and the painter Frank Stella was an admirer, real success eluded her.
A fact made all the more agonising as she was forced to watch her male peers gain recognition for her ideas. Claes Oldenburg was "inspired" by her fabric phallic couch to start creating the soft sculpture for which he would become world famous, while Andy Warhol would copy her innovative idea of creating repeated images of the sole exhibit in her One Thousand Boats installation for his Cow Wallpaper. But worse was to come. In 1965 Kusama created the world's first mirrored-room environment, a precursor to her Infinity Mirror Rooms, at the Castellane Gallery in New York. Only a few months later, in a complete change of artistic direction, avant-garde artist Lucas Samaras exhibited his own mirrored intallation at Pace Gallery. Distraught and dejected, Kusama threw herself from the window of her apartment.
With the support of friends, she managed to pull herself together and participated in the 1966 Venice Biennale, without invitation, to show her Narcissus Garden. A witty take on the commercialisation of the art world, it comprised 1500 mirrored balls that she sold off at a few dollars a time, until officials put a stop to it.
Back in the US, Kusama began staging happenings in newsworthy locations such as Central Park and the grounds of MoMa, often with the intention of promoting peace or criticising the art establishment. However, the fact that many of these events involved nudity caused scandal back in Japan and great shame to her conservative family. Even some elements of the US press critisised what they saw as her endless desire for publicity. Increasingly disillusioned and depressed she returned home to Japan where without the support of family or friends and finding herself unable to paint, she once again attempted suicide.
But it seems that Kusama's desire to create was always greater than her desire to die. Miraculously, she managed to find a hospital where the doctors were interested in art therapy and checked herself in. In this secure environment she found herself able to make art again. Her first works were an uncharacteristically dark series of collages in which she embraced the imagery of natural life cycles, almost as if she was challenging herself to confront her demons.
By this point Kusama had been virtually forgotten both at home and abroad but showing her enduring creative drive and determination she began to re-establish herself from scratch, and gradually her work began to be re-evaluated. A retrospective of her work was held at the Center for International Contemporary Arts in New York in 1989, and four years later, the Japanese art historian, Akira Tatehata, managed to persuade the government that she should be the first solo artist to represent Jpaan at the 1993 Venice Biennale. Although a delicate Kusama had to be accompanied by a psychotherapist, fearful of a nervous breakdown, the exhibition was a phenomenal success and led to a huge transformation in how she was received and recognised in Japan.
Further retrospectives followed while increasing recognition and her supportive environment allowed Kusama to continue to transform her trauma into art. I wanted to feature her in a post for quite a while now. I believe it is important to know the stories and what came before most artists came to success, all the difficult paths they had to endure to be able to live through their art. Yayoi Kusama does exactly that.
As always thank you for reading and I will see you in a next post,
xoxoxo
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