YAYOI KUSAMA, A SUPERSTAR IS IN BASEL, The Foundation Beyeler
YAYOI KUSAMA
Striking colors, polka dots, dreamlike flowers, giant pumpkins, infinity mirror rooms, supernatural, Star Wars-like sculptures, inflatable floating giant creatures surround the visitors in the Foundation Beyeler in Basel nowadays, offering something like an 'Alice in Wonderland' experience for all ages !
WHAT ELSE !
Kusama's shows are a fascinating mix of mass audience popularity and serious curatorial attention, which makes them a unique and captivating experience. Most recently, Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne attracted more than half a million visitors in four months making the gallery’s most popular ticketed exhibition to date.
What makes Kusama’s shows so unique and how come the magic operate for visitors of all ages?
Kusama’s unique artistic fusion and emotional universe resonate deeply with contemporary audiences, forging a powerful connection between artist and spectator. There is a cosmic tension that makes every one of Kusama's art work a spell intended to enchant both the artist and the public. I would even say that it is like an invisible source of power.
For my late parents
Now that you've died
your soul, above cotton-rose clouds
mingles with powdered rainbow light
and disappears forever
And you and I
at the end of our endless battles
of love and hatred
have parted
never meet again
To me, born a child of people
parting is like quite footsteps
on the path of flowers
Beyond the clouds of sunset
a soundless hush
Yayoi Kusama, 'NOW THAT YOU'VE DIED', 1975
Yayoi Kusama was born into a long-established dynasty of landowners and farmers in the Matsumoto City area in Japan in 1929. Kusama’s grandfather, Sueo Kusama, was a businessman and local politician. The only thing Sueo had ever struggled with was having a male heir. When no boys were forthcoming, the Kusama family, like other Japanese families with fortune but no male heirs, adopted one. Kamon Okamura took the name Kusama in 1923, married Shigeru, and became the father of four children: two boys and two girls. The second girl was Yayoi Kusama.
Yayoi Kusama’s early life was overshadow by memories of her dysfunctional family: her mother’s abuse and her father’s infidelity, which she had been forced to spy on.
One day, as Yayoi Kusama was walking through a garden, the violets started to talk to one another, appearing to bear 'uncanny expressions'. Fascinated by her newfound ability to see the natural world in a different way, Yayoi Kusama engaged in 'spiritual dialogues' with the chattering flowers.
In her isolation, painting would be her salvation. As she said, ‘I lost the sense of time, speed and distance, and how to talk to people, I end up locking myself in a room. Painting pictures seemed to be the only way to let me survive in this world, repetition was the foundation of my art.’
I wonder could Yayoi Kusama, a dreamy little girl in the 1940s who spent her days wandering through her family's flower gardens beneath Mount Hotaka and wondering what lay beyond the Japanese Alps have imagined that her art would generate enormous buzz around the world in the 2020s?
Who knows....
Kusama’s artistic career has been shaped profoundly by her unique vision built on themes of repetition, infinity, self-obliteration, and transformation of perception.
In 1957, Kusama moved to New York City in search of creative freedom. It was her first time on a plane, she was deeply impressed by the view of the ocean from the window. Upon arriving in New York, she developed her own minimalist, obsessive style, creating her first "Infinity Net Paintings”-vast canvases covered with thousands of small, rhythmic brushstrokes. These monochrome, repetitive abstractions explore the ideas of infinity, self-obliteration, and psychological depth.
Yayoi Kusama, No.N2, 1961, Private Collection.
In 1960s, she became part of the avant-garde scene alongside Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, Donald Judd in New York City.Truly, the young girl from Japan arrived in New York City with just one suitcase and knew no one, soon, she became a prominent artist and activist in the New York art scene, known for her controversial nude performances protesting capitalism and the Vietnam War.
Her art became prominent not only in New York, but all over Europe. At the 33rd Venice Biennale, she unofficially installed her "Narcissus Garden" on the lawn outside the Italian pavilion. With the help of Lucio Fontana, she arranged around 1,500 silver-coloured mirrored plastic spheres in the shape of a carpet. She intended to sell each ball to visitors for two dollars, displaying signs with phrases such as "NARCISSUS GARDEN" and "YOUR NARCISSISM FOR SALE", as a critique of the art market.Her provocation had an enormous impact, turning the Biennale’s marketplace and audience narcissism into the subject of the art itself.
Yayoi Kusama, Every Day I Pray for Love, 2023, Collection of the Artist, Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts
EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE is Yayoi Kusama's most intimate and late-life series, revealing both her physical perseverance and her spiritual depth as an artist.
The bright colours, organic shapes, faces, eyes, cells and flowers are arranged in dense, rhythmic compositions that seem to pulse with energy. These compositions represent Kusama’s inner cosmos and her lifelong vision of the infinite interconnectedness of all beings.
"Sunk in the sorrows of my mind are the signs of
presence of all creation
Having reached the end of my sadness
I bury myself in the joys of the dazzling world of
people and
among the shed tears"
...
Yayoi Kusama, THE FUTURE IS MINE, 2011
Nazli Kok Akbas, Octobre 2025, Geneva, Switzerland
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