Few visible patterns in modern artwork are as instantly recognizable as Yayoi Kusama’s polka dots. They’ve lined pumpkins, rooms, timber, purses and complete buildings. Even after her demise at 97 was introduced final week, her dots will stay the visible shorthand by which thousands and thousands know her work.
The dots are playful sufficient to please kids and unmistakable sufficient to operate as a worldwide model. But they got here from a darker place: the hallucinations, obsessive ideas and worry of self-obliteration that Kusama described as following her from childhood.
After I interviewed Kusama in 2016 for the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, forward of a significant Scandinavian retrospective at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, I requested what the dots meant to her. The interview was revealed in Swedish; her authentic solutions quoted right here haven’t beforehand appeared in English.
