Yayoi Kusama, «the priestess of polka dots» on the cover of «la Lettura» – Corriere.it

certainly one of the most celebrated and well-known artists in the world. But Yayoi Kusama, high priestess of polka dots, from the top of her 93 years (Matsumoto, Japan, 1929) is something more: in addition to being surreal avant-garde painter, provocative sculptorauthor of performances with powerful erotic values, also writer, director, choreographer, as well as stylist, for years in close collaboration with the house Louis Vuitton, with whom he has just renewed his collaboration. But most of all, a woman who has transformed all of herself, her body, her hallucinations, we could even say her delusions, into a fantastic worldvisionary, bewitching and prodigious.

In short, Yayoi Kusama herself is a work of art. A total, unconditioned, absolute work. Now, too Yayoi Kusama joins the great team of artists of La Lettura with an intense cover (number 577): we recognize the same artist intent on giving life to her fantastic world, full of red polka dots. the distinctive element of all her poetics, in some way also the symbol of her destiny: since her youth Kusama is in fact afflicted by hallucinations which she heals through art. Along with a spiritual cosmic vision. The polka dot as infinity of the soulso.

And in his beautiful volume (Infinity Net. My autobiography, Johan&Levi, pp. 160, and 19, 2013) tells his whole story in the first person life built even through a painful pathlike when in 1957 he decides to leave Japan for New York (which he calls Hell on Earth) where he literally goes hungry: Sometimes, when I felt sad, I climbed the Empire State Building. New York was the stronghold of capitalism and it still bore the marks of the American Golden Age, of pre-Vietnam War prosperity: a grand, boundless landscape where, amidst the glitter of precious stones, the great drama of human life was played out, a swirling confusion of praise and infamy . At the top of the tallest skyscraper in existence at the time, I felt that I was on the threshold of every earthly ambition, that anything was possible.

Kusama goes on a long journey of sanitizing through art but always very present, both in a social critique and in an intimate journey of self-awareness. Sthe overcomes poverty and repeated nervous breakdowns exorcising one’s phobias. This is how he builds his first ones Infinity Nets and the Soft sculptures. He dedicates himself to psychosomatic art (works and performances dedicated to sex, which he reveals he is afraid of) and he too becomes a reference in the hippie world. Eros and Thanatos pursue her. But none of this, in truth, belongs to her. Especially death, which, as her friend Joseph Cornell recalled, like moving into the room next to her.

Yayoi Kusama a living myth that finds the purest essence of existence in art. His autobiography closes with these verses: Dust of a thousand colors falls from the darkness of the night onto my body. And I will not forget the moments of emotion entrusted to the wind. Was the beauty of life’s final hour all an illusion? I ask you. To you, who welcomed my prayer, to leave footprints of beauty. To you, with love.