02/09/2026
YAYOI KUSAMA
1929–2026
BEFORE THE WORLD
KNEW THE DOTS
A seven-decade journey from obscurity to cultural immortality.
Image: Sotheby’s portrait
NONE OF THIS
WAS INEVITABLE
In 1958, Kusama arrived in New York with limited money, limited English and almost no connections.
She entered an art world that had little reason to make space for her.
Image: Kusama with Infinity Net paintings in her New York studio, 1961
THE $75 PAINTINGS
In 1959, Kusama covered enormous canvases with thousands of tiny, repeated loops.
She called them the Infinity Nets.
Early examples reportedly sold for around $75.
Image: No. F, 1959
SHE DIDN’T JUST
WITNESS THE AVANT-GARDE
SHE HELPED CREATE IT
Kusama moved beyond painting into sculpture, installation, film, fashion and radical public performance.
Image: The Anatomic Explosion, New York, 1968
YOUR NARCISSISM
FOR SALE
At the 1966 Venice Biennale, Kusama presented 1,500 mirrored spheres and offered them to visitors for two dollars each.
It was installation, performance and art-market critique in one unforgettable gesture.
Image: Narcissus Garden, Venice, 1966
THEN THE ART WORLD
LOOKED AWAY
Kusama returned to Japan in 1973 and gradually disappeared from the centre of the international conversation.
But she never stopped working.
Twenty years later, Venice helped change everything.
Image: Mirror Room (Pumpkin), Venice, 1993
THE COMEBACK
BECAME A PHENOMENON
The mirrored rooms transformed Kusama’s lifelong exploration of repetition into something audiences could physically enter.
Museums followed.
The queues followed.
Millions of people followed.
Image: The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, 2013
WHEN ART BECOMES
A CULTURAL LANGUAGE
George Clooney disappeared into her dots.
Louis Vuitton transformed global storefronts into Kusama installations.
Her visual language moved effortlessly between art, fashion, architecture and popular culture.
Images: George Clooney for W Magazine and Louis Vuitton x Yayoi Kusama
FROM $75
TO $10.5 MILLION
In 2022, Untitled (Nets), painted in 1959, sold at Phillips New York for $10,496,000.
The market eventually caught up with the artist.
BEFORE THE MUSEUMS
BEFORE THE RECORDS
B
