[News Figures] Kusama Yayoi Appears at New York Luxury Store

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Domestic Violence, and Trauma Transformed into Art
Creation of the So-Called 'Ddaengddaengi Style' Drawing Only with 'Dots'
The Highest-Priced Living Female Artist

[Asia Economy Reporter Han Seung-gon] The French luxury brand Louis Vuitton recently unveiled a new collection featuring products such as handbags, clothing, and accessories that incorporate the works of the famous Japanese artist Kusama Yayoi (93) through a collaboration. This collaboration marks the first in 11 years since 2012, with the collection theme titled "Creation of Infinity."

As part of its promotional efforts, Louis Vuitton created a robot resembling Kusama and installed it in its store located on Fifth Avenue in New York. The Kusama robot exhibits natural movements like a human. It draws pictures inside the store window and also greets customers. It blinks its eyes or smiles when it sees visitors.

Kusama's artistic world reflects her painful life. Born in 1929 in Matsumoto City, Nagano, Japan, Kusama suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder from a young age. She entered Kyoto City University of Arts in 1947 and began her artistic career with her first solo exhibition in 1952.

She is also known as the first postwar Japanese artist to break into New York. However, there is a painful story behind this. Although Kusama was born into a wealthy family, she grew up experiencing domestic violence. Ultimately, in 1958, the year she turned 29, she fled to the United States to escape her parents. Settling in New York, Kusama is known to have used her body as a canvas, continuously drawing dots and nets.

When works composed solely of organically connected "nets" and "dots" appeared, the art world showed great interest. Adding the story that her works stemmed from the obsessions and traumas that tormented her, she gradually gained fame as an artist who sublimated pain through art.

Robot of famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama installed at the Louis Vuitton store on 5th Avenue, New York, USA. Photo by Louis Vuitton

After returning to Japan in 1973, Kusama immersed herself more actively in her artistic activities. Then, in 1993, she created a genre known as "Kusama Yayoi" in the global art world with her installation art of a yellow pumpkin with black polka dots at the Japanese Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Due to her obsessive-compulsive disorder, the so-called "polka dot style," which repeats round patterns, became Kusama's signature. Her representative works include ▲Pumpkins ▲Infinite Mirror Rooms ▲Obsessions with dots.

Kusama is also widely known as the only artist whose works have been sold on every continent worldwide. In 2016, she was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine. She received the French Order of Arts and Letters in 2003 and has held over 100 group exhibitions and more than 100 solo exhibitions, including major international exhibitions such as the Sydney Biennale and Taipei Biennale.

She is especially recognized as the highest-priced living female artist. According to the "2022 Domestic Art Auction Market Year-End Review" released by the Korea Art Market Appraisal Association and Artprice, Kusama's works sold for approximately 27.67436 billion KRW in one year. The auction success rate was 73%. The highest individual work auction price was also a "Pumpkin" painting (6.42 billion KRW) exhibited at Seoul Auction.

Her "Yellow Pumpkin," installed on Naoshima Island in Japan, is set up massively by the seaside and is considered a kind of pilgrimage site frequently visited by her fans as well as art world figures. Kusama voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital in 1977 due to schizophrenia and has been living by commuting between the hospital and her studio ever since.