Japanese painter, sculptor, writer, installation and performance artist Yayoi Kusama has been in the vanguard of contemporary art for sixty years. Best known for her use of intense, repetitive patterns of dots (which she claims evolved from the hallucinations she's had since childhood), Kusama, now 84 years old, is finally getting the international recognition she deserves.
Hi, Konnichiwa brings together Kusama's vivid imagery and haunting words with photos of the artist at work and at various stages in her life. The pieces are mostly from recent years (2000-2012), although there are some that go back as far as the 1950s. Here are Kusama's large-scale canvases, environmental sculptures, multi-media installations, and numerous self-portraits. Here, too, are photos of the young, solemn child of ten; of Kusama in 1950's, and up through the '60s and '70s, often wearing outrageous clothes of her own design. And we see Yayoi Kusama in recent years, working in her studio in Tokyo — minus the garish make-up and red wig. The book is a chronicle of her creative endeavors and of her life, offering a glimpse into the fevered imagination of this very complicated and fascinating woman.

Yayoi Kusama's profile page

Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929 to an upper-middle-class merchant family living in Matsumoto, about 100 miles northwest of Tokyo. Her childhood was difficult: her parents' marriage was troubled , and Kusama began suffering from hallucinations and suicidal thoughts at an early age. She says that her art has been both a manifestation of her turbulent mental state, and a cathartic act. In 1957, she moved to the U.S., first living in Seattle and then settling in New York City. Here, she became actively involved in the New York avant-garde and Pop Art movements. Kusama moved back to Japan in 1973 and checked herself into a mental hospital, where she continues to live.