By: Priscilla Frank
Source: Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/08/yayoi-kusama-most-famous-artist-in-the-world_n_7018862.html?utm_hp_ref=arts
Yayoi Kusuma, born in Japan in 1929, now eighty-six years old and resigning in the Seiwa Hospital for the Mentally Ill, is named "the most popular artist in the world" (Frank, 1). She began having hallucinations of polka dots at the age of ten, which, to her, were symbolic depictions of earth, moon, sun, and humans. It was these hallucinations that found their way into her art, composed largely of the polka dots themselves. Kusuma's explanation behind the dots lied somewhere along the lines of them "help[ing] to 'obliterate' her sense of self, allowing her to connect with the infinite universe" (Frank, 1). Her artwork, prominent in Asia, is viewed by millions of people, leading to one of her exhibitions having the highest attendance of any other artist in 2014. Kusuma has expressed her art in the form of sculptures "stemming from a lifelong phobia of sex" (Frank, 1), to images of polka dots intermingling with nudity, combining art with the human body and form. Being in the mental hospital she is now, Kusuma is the least bit unmotivated to create, continuing to produce art daily.
Art in its many forms, possesses endless abilities to convey, to portray, to draw in, and to isolate from all that lies around. Kusuma's otherworldly inspired artwork manages to draw the viewer into a different world aside from their own, pulling them into her own perceptions and giving them the "sensation of losing oneself to the surrounding noise, and somehow still finding peace" (Frank, 1). Her work truly shows that art can come from anywhere, anyone, and is one of the rare aspects of life that conveys no boundaries.
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