Yayoi Kusama
(c)M HKA
Manhattan Suicide Addict, 2005
Literary synopsis
'The art that grows out of my canvases forms an environment, aspires to build a new stage on our time, involving the audience who suffer from the same obsessions as mine.' Thus wrote Yayoi Kusama in her brilliant faux autobiography, Manhattan Suicide Addict, an account of the years she spent in New York between the late '50s and the late '60s. Having left behind a strict family life in post-war Japan, Kusama entered a period of heightened creativity. She was free to make what she wanted, but plagued by fears of intimacy and inadequacy. Her art became a form of therapy, and she went on to create a unique body of work that not only parallels and transcends the Pop art, Minimal art and Happenings of the '60s, but has been influential for artists working today. The enduring fascination with Kusama suggests that her obsessions may have been ours as well.