The artist Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929. Her hometown was Kyoto. Her family made money from selling seeds. At the age of 19 she studied the formal Meiji painting style. Nihonga was not for her and she said years later, "When I think of my life in Kyoto, I feel like vomiting."
After the War she became obsessed with polka dots which she called infinity nets.
"A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colorful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement ... Polka dots are a way to infinity."
She sometimes painted nude.
She was against the Vietnam War and offered to fuck President Nixon, if he called a truce in South East Asia. He never responded to the offer.
She has spent many years living in a mental asylum.
Plagued by hallucinations.
"and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle.
She is a true artist.
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