When I was a wildly depressed teenager, I began searching for the meaning of life, a famously fruitful pursuit. I came out as queer quite young and felt alienated from other teenagers. The straight people around me did not appear to be struggling with the same questions about sexuality, gender, and life. I wanted to know why expectations for me as a young woman were so limiting, especially growing up in a religious, Southern environment. I wanted to know why my queerness drew such hostility from people. I wanted to know why I felt so out of place all the time and what the point of being a person was. I felt increasingly isolated in my experience, which resulted in struggles with my mental health. I was handling the human condition poorly, but I wasn’t the first to do so. It seemed someone somewhere might have some answers. I consumed music and art with desperation, hungry for someone to tell me why everything felt so awful all the time and what I could do about it.
In my pursuit, I stumbled across Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s painting “花朵” or “The Flowers.” I was struck by the contrast of light and dark, femininity and masculinity, fragility and strength. The gentleness, the prettiness of polka dots on flower petals: an objectively unnatural image somehow looking quite right. Her work did feel like an answer of sorts to my questions.
Kusama is a 94-year-old sculptor and painter who works with polka dots and mirrors to create some of the most striking artwork I’ve ever seen. She’s an eye-catching woman herself, known for her eclectic, often polka-dotted outfits and her bright red bobbed hair.
When asked about her love of polka dots, Kusama stated, “Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment.” I love that concept: the obliteration of nature connecting us, making us all into one big polka dot instead of leaving us in our fragmented pieces.
Kusama grew up in Matsumoto, Japan. In her twenties, she moved to America. She spent the 1960s in the New York City avant-garde art scene. Her work and style inspired artists such as Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, and Joseph Cornell. She explored performance art and music. She opened a gay social club called the Kusama ‘Omophile Kompany. She wrote to Richard Nixon offering to have sex with him if he stopped the Vietnam War. She participated in political movements and created protest art.
Then in the mid-1970s, she returned to Japan and checked herself into a mental health facility, where she remains to this day. Her art studio is nearby, and she continues to create art about feminism, sex, sexuality, destruction, politics, and more. She has lived at the facility for 45 years, exactly half her lifetime.
I have always been very moved by the idea of living an impactful, creative life while battling severe mental illness. Kusama has continued to create internationally celebrated art from the mental health facility. She painted “The Flowers” in 1983, which means she was living full-time in the facility when she created the flowers that would go on to impact me 35 years later, all the way across the world.
Roland Barthes’ theory of “the death of the Author” refers to the idea that the author of a work is considered to be “dead” or irrelevant to the interpretation of their text. Barthes posits that an author cannot determine the meaning of their own work; they can simply produce art and release it to the world. He further states that a reader would be in error to analyze a piece of literature in the context of an artist’s life. In his text, “What is an Author, ” Michael Foucault presents a similar idea. Foucault begins by discussing the historical context of authorship, tracing its development from ancient Greece to the modern era. He notes that in the past, the author was often seen as a mere transmitter of divine knowledge, rather than an original creator. However, as literature became more secular, the figure of the author took on greater importance. Foucault argues this has led to a narrow approach to literary interpretation. Like Barthes, Foucault believes that we should focus on the text itself as well as the wider cultural and historical contexts in which it was produced.
I have historically struggled with this concept. Not in a “separate the art from the artist,” culture-war way, but in the sense that I do prefer when an artist’s background and intention inform their artwork. I do not disagree that historical context is relevant to literary and artistic analysis. But as a consumer of art, I must admit that knowing an author’s background often strengthens my emotional connection to a piece. Perhaps that is a great betrayal of my English degree, but it is how I feel.
I’ve always sought art from creatives who were also using their art form to process their queerness, their womanhood, their mental illness, or all of the above. Kusama’s flowers and her polka dots mean more to me knowing her history with her health. It means more to me to know she was political, social, and funny, too. It would be challenging to evaluate my relationship with her art without accounting for my knowledge of her life and the context it brings to her work.
Kusama is often quoted as saying: “If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago.” As someone who was asking questions of art, it was comforting to know this stranger all the way across the world had sought the same answers. Most importantly, she seemed to find them.
Kusama’s life inspired me to think that even if I struggled with mental illness for the rest of my life, I could still have a chance of creating meaningful art.
A few years ago, her piece “All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” came to the Museum of Art in my hometown, Dallas. This piece was one of Kusama’s iconic infinity rooms: small rooms with sculptures and mirrored walls that make the art look “infinite.”
I booked my ticket well in advance to see the exhibit. Once we arrived at the museum, my friend and I waited in a long line winding down the museum’s halls. Without context, I’m sure it would have looked bizarre: a trail of people waiting to enter a small white cube in the center of a big, empty room.
We had only two minutes allocated to enter the piece. As we entered, I felt a nervous reverence, the same feeling I would get entering church as a child.
The tiny room was full of bright yellow, polka-dotted pumpkins which went on forever in the endless mirrors. And we went on forever, too.
I was obliterated. I was consumed by infinite spots on infinite pumpkins. Inside that little box, I, too, became a polka dot in the great expanse of the universe.
photo courtesy of the author
