The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of a 21st Century Icon: Yayoi Kusama

As a radical part of the New York avant-garde scene, Yayoi Kusama rose to prominence in the swinging sixties before fading into relative obscurity, only to stage a remarkable comeback in the 21st century to become an unexpected darling of the social media age and the biggest-selling female artist in the world. Here’s how.

Over the past quarter-century until her death at the age of 97 in August 2026, Yayoi Kusama went from avant-garde cult figure to global cultural phenomenon, as her pumpkins, polka dots, mirrors, and repetition of her Infinity Mirrors escaped gallery walls to influence fashion, design, and win her a wealth of new fans on social media.

Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama had already spent decades making uncompromisingly repetitive work before her name was effectively written out of art history in the 1970s. But, as the 21st century dawned, Kusama’s blend of influences and styles found an appreciative new audience.

Kusama’s extraordinary late-career ascent transformed her from an avant-garde outsider into a global cultural icon. Her lifelong obsession with repetition, infinity and dissolving the boundaries between the individual and their surroundings proved remarkably suited to the age of the smartphone, winning her a vast new audience. Kusama also achieved the rare double feat of achieving serious critical attention and immense popularity to become the world’s top-selling female artist, whose 2024 show in Australia became the most popular exhibition in the country’s history.

Infinite Possibilities

Kusama’s rise, fall, and ascension to global prominence isn’t a conventional one. Suffering from hallucinations throughout childhood and into her adult life, Kusama channeled her visions of flowers speaking to her into a life of conceptual art infused with Feminism, Minimalism, Surrealism, Pop Art, and Abstract Expressionism.

Arriving in New York in 1958 at the age of 27 with a few hundred dollars sewn into the lining of her dresses, 60 silk kimonos, and some drawings, Kusama hosted her first solo New York exhibition in 1959. It was her Infinity Net paintings that provided her breakthrough, which were influenced by waves viewed from the cabin of her first plane journey, and were painted in a repetitive singular gesture of impasto in little loops.

Playing with the notion of infinite repetition and space, her Infinity Nets series brought Kusama critical attention, but it was her uninvited appearance at the 33rd Venice Biennale in 1966 that gained her notoriety thanks to her lake of 1,500 reflective balls called Narcissus Garden, which reflected the viewer’s face, much like a selfie. The audience lapped it up as an ad read “your narcissism for sale” as she sold the balls for $2 each. The Biennale authorities weren’t as appreciative, objecting to “selling art like hot dogs or ice-cream cones”.

When the summer of love arrived, Kusama embodied the spirit of the era and painted naked partygoers with polka dots, taking these happenings to the New York Stock Exchange and the steps of the Statue of Liberty in opposition to Richard Nixon’s election and the Vietnam War. But, by the turn of the ‘70s, Kusama became something of an outdated outcast. And following the death of her platonic partner, Joseph Cornell, and then her father two years later, she returned to Japan. By this time, her hallucinations and panic attacks of her adolescence returned with full force and in March 1977 she admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital.

This would signal the end of a career for many, but for Kusama it proved to be something of a rebirth. The hospital offered art therapy courses and she made it her home for nearly 50 years until her death. Sleeping at the hospital at night and working in her studio across the road six days a week, Kusama quietly worked like this for a decade, under the critical radar. That changed in 1989.

Global Rebirth

Twelve long years after she returned to Japan from New York, the Center for International Contemporary Arts (CICA), New York, hosted Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective, returning her distinct output of paintings, soft sculptures, and installations to an appreciative new audience.

This was just the beginning, as it was her official appearance representing Japan at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993 that proved to be the ultimate turning point. Making history as the first solo artist chosen to represent Japan at the pavilion, her solo showcase brought Kusama back to the attention of a global audience.

Featuring early net paintings and soft sculptures, the exhibition’s main attraction was Mirror Room (Pumpkin) (1991). How could anyone ignore a yellow-and-black polka-dot-covered installation containing a small, mirrored infinity room filled with pumpkin sculptures? And the critics loved it, both in Japan and internationally, launching the late-career ascent that turned her into a global cultural icon.

Retrospectives followed at the New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1998, Tate Modern, London in 2012, and Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum in 2017, as tickets for her shows sold out swiftly around the world and fans queued for hours just to be allowed a one minute glimpse of her installations, like in The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away at The Broad, Los Angeles, where an estimated 1.5 million people have passed through.

Kusama’s shift towards installations has proved popular; hundreds of people daily wait for to snap her installation at The Broad and capture its constellation of LED lights, wall-to-wall mirrors, and shallow water surrounding the viewing platform for an Instagram audience.

#newonlineaudience

While Kusama’s art was feted by critics and found a new appreciative audience in the 1990s and early 2000s, a global technological phenomenon would transform her installations into must see attractions. Together, the camera phone and social media platforms like Instagram enhanced Kusama’s popularity, as her immersive Infinity Rooms and bold polka-dot designs provided visually striking backdrops for social media posts.

Kusama’s first infinity room, Phalli’s Field (1965) was designed to achieve endless accumulation and conquer her personal fears through immersive repetition. Kusama described her desire for “self-obliteration”, becoming “one of the dots among the millions of dots in the universe”. But instead of hiding in plain sight of an endless array of dots or reflected images, this new audience was dazzled by the immersive experience and shared it online.

Creating an otherworldly environment filled with bright contrasting colors, pumpkins, and mirrors, these experiences begged to be photographed by audiences of all ages. Some snapped a quick pic to show friends, while others immersed themselves in the artwork to make attention-grabbing images suitable for the small screen.

Wrapping viewers in kaleidoscopic spaces, reflections, and floor to ceiling color turned a traditional museum visit into a magical, otherworldly environment for a whole new audience. The immersive and interactive nature of her work has appealed to a new audience and museums have cottoned onto this, with the 360-degree digital projections of exhibitions like Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience proving popular as it tours around the United States.

Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms are perhaps the most recognizable contemporary art installations on the planet. And its interactive nature has been successfully repeated at the Smithsonian Institute’s Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC in 2017, where visitors applied more than 800,000 polka dot stickers to a white room (and themselves) before snapping a picture.

It’s perfect fodder for the Instagram era and turned Kusama’s art into a globally recognized brand. Very few living artists achieved that level of visual recognition. The social media promotion wasn’t without its pitfalls though, as Kusama exhibition the Hirshhorn Museum was temporarily closed in 2017 after someone damaged an artwork while attempting to take a selfie.

Fashionable Art

Kusama’s achievements in the 21st century haven’t been confined to museums, as artistic recognition has brought with it a collaboration with Louis Vuitton in 2012, as her trademark dots appeared across handbags, clothing, windows and stores.

Fashion wasn’t an entirely new venture for Kusama, who in 1968, established Kusama Fashion Company Ltd, and sold avant-garde fashion in the Kusama Corner at Bloomingdale’s. And her collaboration with Louis Vuitton wasn’t without precedent, as in 2009, Kusama designed Handbag for Space Travel, My Doggie Ring-Ring, a handbag-shaped cell phone, as well as a red and white dotted phone inside a mirrored box dubbed Dots Obsession, Full Happiness With Dots, for a Japanese mobile communication giant.

Since then, Kusama has created artwork for Lancôme lip glosses in 2011, and in the same year, she worked with Marc Jacobs on a range of accessories, shoes, watches, and jewelry. You might remember Kusama’s trademark tentacle-like protrusions and polka-dots covering a SoHo pop-up shop in 2012 to celebrate the collaboration.

By the start of the decade, Kusama was a fixture of popular culture, a fact which seemed to be confirmed in 2023, when a giant figure of Kusama was installed to tower over Louis Vuitton’s flagship store on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Moved Millions

It’s not just on the high street where Kusama’s art is breaking records, as at auction Kusama’s art has totaled between $60 and $80 million annually, while in 2023, her market alone generated roughly $80.9 million at auction, making her the best-selling contemporary artist, beating David Hockney into top spot.

Kusama’s Untitled (Nets) (1959) sold at Phillips for $10.5 million in May 2022, the monumental in size A Flower (2014) sold for approximately $8.3 million at Christie’s Hong Kong in November 2023, and White No. 28 (1960) from her Infinity Nets series sold for $7.1 million in November 2014 at Christie’s, briefly making her the most expensive living female artist at auction. And records were again broken in 2024, when a Kusama limited edition yellow and black leather monogram Louis Vuitton pumpkin bag sold for $151,200 at Christie’s, setting a new world record price for a Louis Vuitton handbag.

And while original pieces by Kusama grab the headlines, it’s the lower-priced prints and multiple editions that make up roughly 45% of her total lots sold, generating close to $65 million collectively since 2000.

But, while Kusama’s artwork has lit up auction rooms, festooned galleries in light, dazzled on social media posts, and spotted over bags, Kusama’s intention for her art has a much simpler motive. Commercial success was never part of her process.

“Long ago,” Kusama said to the Guardian newspaper, “I decided that all I could do was express my thoughts through my art and that I would continue to do this until I died, even if no one was ever to see my work. Today, I never forget that my artworks have moved millions of people all around the world.”