At 96 years old, Yayoi Kusama has become a global superstar of contemporary art, creating stage designs for pop sensation Adele, designing luxury handbags for Louis Vuitton, and selling her iconic pumpkin sculptures for millions of dollars. The Japanese artist, who voluntarily lives and works in a psychiatric clinic in Tokyo, is now being celebrated in the largest exhibition in the history of Basel's Fondation Beyeler, opening October 12th and running through January 25th, 2026.
The comprehensive retrospective, prepared over four years, showcases Kusama's entire artistic universe to both art connoisseurs and children alike. Museum Director Sam Keller explains that visitors must understand Kusama's origins to fully appreciate her work, pointing to a drawing she created as a 10-year-old that already featured her now-famous polka dots. Growing up in 1930s Japan during wartime in a strict household where art had no place, Kusama drew obsessively from childhood, developing her unique style while studying traditional Japanese painting.
Kusama's worldview is deeply animistic, believing she could communicate with plants and animals from an early age. Her post-war paintings feature eyes, flowers, fish, and landscapes filled with repetitions, reflecting nature's inherent patterns of life and death occurring simultaneously. Pumpkins became her personal totem, with Kusama once saying, "Pumpkins have a friendly personality. I love them the way other people love their pets." During lonely times at art school in Kyoto, a pumpkin in her room provided comfort as she meditated on it and painted it repeatedly.
Hallucinations have accompanied Kusama throughout her life and work, manifesting as endless dots, nets, and patterns everywhere she looks. Rather than being overwhelmed by these visions, she transforms them into art, facing her fears and converting them into creative energy. Her dots represent infinity from the micro level of cells to the macro level of the world as a point in the universe, with everything revolving around the dissolution of self and merging with the infinite. As Kusama explains, "I hope everyone could see infinity."
At age 28, Kusama finally traveled to America, where inspiration struck during her flight over the Pacific Ocean, leading to her first Infinity Nets – sprawling meshes of thousands of lines. She would work obsessively for up to 50 hours straight until she saw nets everywhere, not just on canvas. Becoming part of the avant-garde movement, she created fashion, performances, and pioneered soft sculptures by covering furniture, clothes, and everyday objects with textile phallic forms as her way of dealing with fears about sex and food.
After the wild hippie years of the late 1960s, Kusama returned to Japan in the early 1970s due to increasing anxiety and suicidal thoughts. In 1977, she voluntarily admitted herself to a psychiatric clinic in Tokyo, where she continues to work daily. Her studio and personal museum are located nearby, and she uses art as her only way to cope with anxieties and visions. Keller emphasizes that "she's not crazy, but a highly gifted woman who sees the world through different eyes," demonstrating her talents as a painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and performer who transcends the boundaries between art and life.
Kusama's polka dots have achieved global fame, particularly through her collaboration with French luxury brand Louis Vuitton. Pop star Adele incorporated one of her Infinity Mirrored Rooms into a stage design, and visitors to the Fondation Beyeler can enter similar mirrored rooms that have become Instagram selfie classics. The exhibition also features a large mirrored room filled with inflated tentacles that creates an instant childlike paradise, opening visitors' eyes to wonder while remaining worth millions of dollars.
Despite her commercial success, Kusama lives modestly and doesn't purchase yachts, cars, planes, or houses with her earnings. Instead, she established a foundation to ensure her work's survival through a dedicated museum. The 96-year-old artist continues painting, with some of her newest works in the Beyeler exhibition dating from 2024 and being shown for the first time. One of her most recent pieces, "Every Day I Pray for Love" from 2023, demonstrates her ongoing creative vitality and enduring hope for connection and understanding through art.
