Zoey Wang

The Secrets to Being the World’s Most Famous Female Artist

Among the first Japanese artists to arrive in New York City after WWII, Yayoi Kusama recalls in her autobiography that her airplane cabin to the States was “empty except for two American GIs, a war bride, and me.” Often making appearances in colorful kimonos, adorned by heavy “Cleopatra” coiffures and straight bangs, the press-savvy Kusama has since inspired heated discussion and profuse art-historical analysis. Some of these came out of post-colonialism, feminism, iconography, and social art history; others derived psychoanalytic conclusions from the self-reported hallucinatory experiences of Kusama.

Beyond the multiplicity of lenses that art historians use, however, these instances being isolated from a seven-decade-long history of expressive outputs are only snippets of her prolific career; together, they attest to the versatility and profound levels of introspection of her vision that defies labeling or definition, as she harnessed the emptiness inside of her and filled it with art.

In view of the upcoming sequel to the blockbuster survey organized by the Hirshhorn Museum, we should be cautious in conducting art historical analysis when tempted to compartmentalize an artist, according strictly to aspects of psychology, biography and personal history. This task is made especially difficult in the case of Yayoi Kusama, who underwent distinctive phases of expressive choices, critical response and international reception. Now at the age of 90, Yayoi Kusama is one of the most important artists to come out of Japan, and holds the record for the most expensive living female artist in the world. The artist’s celebrity as well as cult status has become a global phenomenon that attests not only to her impact on the art world, but also the necessary scholarly caution one needs to exercise, to see Kusama not as someone to be assigned to canonized compartmentalizations of the contemporary art scene, but an active participant and a fierce pioneer with a duality of power to continuously shape and reshape key debates.