Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama by Yayoi Kusama: book review

Infinity Net (2002, English edition 2011) is the memoir of Japanese avant-garde artist, sculptor, and novelist Yayoi Kusama.

Kusama begins with the Yokohma 2001 International Triennale of Contemporary Art exhibition in which she showcased two installations. She then goes back in time to 1957 when she left Japan to further her career in art in America at the age of 27: ‘my destiny was decided’ in New York. After an initial struggle, she became a successful artist, noted for her ‘net’ art and later for her polka dots and ‘Kusama Happenings’ in the 1960s.

She painted the same thing every day: black canvases covered with nothing but nets, which looked like white lace. She describes her obsessive repetitive patterns and her ‘severe neurosis’ stemming from a ‘toxic childhood.’ She says that ‘before and after creating a work I fell ill, menaced by obsessions that crawl through my body.’ She suffered hallucinations, asthma, arrhythmia, tachycardia, and high and low blood pressure due to her severe anxieties.

Her art was her means to ‘obliterating’ her fears: ‘I fight pain, anxiety and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art.’ She adds that ‘If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago.’

Kusama diverts attention from her neurosis briefly by discussing the artists that were her benefactors in America, that she credits with helping her when she needed it the most: Georgia O’Keefe (1887-1986), Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), Andy Warhol (1928-1987), and Donald Judd (1928-1994).

She returned to her homeland Japan in 1975 due to her illness. She admitted herself into a psychiatric hospital where she still lives, by choice. She has built an art studio across the street from the hospital to continue her art. ‘But to tell the truth, to this day I do not feel that I have ‘made it’ as an artist.’

Writing her autobiography in 2002 at 72 years of age, she is now 87, still living in the psychiatric hospital, and still painting.

Kusama’s autobiography describes her thoughts behind her artwork, how they developed, and why she focussed on specific themes. It provides readers with a full understanding behind her as an iconic figure and her iconic art. She is exceptionally honest and open about her mental anguish, but also about how she fully comprehends the triggers and how she deals with her demons – initially personally and later with the assistance of professional psychiatrists.

This is a fascinating autobiography. This is more than a description of her artwork. It is an in-depth private view of her imagination and creativity, and the neuroses that drives her art as a way to exterminate her fears. ‘The positive and negative become one and consolidate my expression.’ She defines her work as Psychosomatic Art. Kusama finishes her autobiography in 2002 in a reflective, calm state of mind, content to continue her art – because she needs to, because she has to, because she wants to, and because it keeps her alive.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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Martina Nicolls is an author and international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilisation, and foreign aid audits and evaluations.

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