By Simon Elliott (SelfMadeHero)
ISBN: 978-1-91422-430-0 (HB)
This book includes Discriminatory Content produced for dramatic effect.
The Sixties were an amazing time, I remember them well – which apparently means that I wasn’t really there. However, many others were and this potent revisitation and exploration of one of the most misplaced icons of that era reveals in fabulous fashion how she overcame institutional neglect, habitual sidelining, racial intolerance and gender prejudice to finally see her merit and achievements acknowledged.
Moreover, the long climb and her subsequent fame and influence have been magnified in the decades since, both abroad and – most crucially – in the land of her birth and where she was first discarded. Apparently, living long and well and true to oneself is the best revenge…
Legal eagle Simon Elliot (art obsessive, criminal barrister and stand-up comedian by night) adds to his list of side hustle successes with another superb artist biography to supplement Hockney: A Graphic Life (Frances Lincoln, 2023), and 2024’s Vincent: A Graphic Biography by here encapsulating and reassessing, in potent pictorial terms, the life of Japanese sensation and grande dame Kusama Yayoi.
Avant-garde icon, globetrotting art ambassador, Pop Art Darling and perennial target and headline fodder for paparazzi and media parasites, Kusama is best known for literally thousands of artworks comprised of countless dots painstakingly painted, drawn and stuck down, and her vast “infinity nets” works. However, as seen in this compelling biography, her unique manner of perceiving the world and addressing her mental health issues has also been impressively expressed in other forms of conceptual art, including filmmaking, poetry, fashion design, fiction, performance and video art, as well as tradition but novel sculptural and painted forms. You can actually own a piece of her massive and monumental output simply by buying a copy of the 2012 Penguin Classics Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland which she illustrated.
Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Kusama Yayoi grew up in a wealthy home, afflicted by appalling abusive parents in the go-getting yet ferociously hidebound and formal Japan ruled by empire-building militarists. Subjected to a cruel home life and the whims of capricious parents at war with each other, the little girl was ostracised by her siblings and became obsessed with nature and art. She also suffered from periodic hallucinogenic episodes…
Enduring war, occupation in the aftermath and parental pressure to marry beneficially and strategically for the sake of the family, Yayoi pursued her art intensely and reached out to other women artists. In 1958 she managed to escape to America just in time for the art and social revolution to swallow her…
As with other women during the Pop Art era, Yayoi “inspired” white male artists including Andy Warhol and particularly Claes Oldenburg. The latter shared studio space with Kusama, whose rubber and fabric installations only coincidentally predated Oldenburg’s soft sculpture phase… and that’s when her story, artistic ascension, international expansions and eventual triumph begins…
Gloriously vibrant and ebullient, this light-looking but heavy-hitting appreciation, history and assessment of a figure unique even for the weird world of gallery art is a beguiling and powerful introduction to a much overlooked (here in the west at least) artist who deserves to be a household name right beside her avant-garde contemporaries and cherished for everything she’s done since…
Text and images © 2025 Simon Elliot.
Kusama: Polka Dot Queen will be published on 10th April 2025 and is available for pre-