Japan's kaleidoscopic, troubled 'polka dot queen'

The dotty pumpkins and kaleidoscope rooms of Yayoi Kusama, who has died aged 97, were as vibrant as the artist herself, but her exuberant work was the expression of a long battle with mental illness.
Her larger-than-life paintings, sculptures and installations — inspired by vivid hallucinations — sold for millions of dollars and packed out top galleries.
Kusama, instantly recognisable in her bright red wig and bold spotted outfits, worked well into old age from the psychiatric hospital in Tokyo where she lived voluntarily for the second half of her life.
Born in 1929, the youngest daughter of a wealthy but troubled family, Kusama began producing her signature dot and net patterns aged 10.
'One day, after seeing a tablecloth with a red flower pattern on a desk, I saw the same red flower pattern all over the ceiling, windows and pillars. It filled the room and covered my body'.
Art provided a release for the young Kusama, whose father, a seedling merchant, was unfaithful to her mother.

'When I was sad or lonely, everything would be cured when I drew pictures', she said.
In the book, Kusama explained her concept of 'self-obliteration' — a recurrent theme throughout her career.
'I put dots all over my body and make all the surroundings dot patterns. By creating the same thing over and over, my own existence is buried in the art'.
Kusama studied Japanese painting in Kyoto, against her parents' wishes and held her first solo exhibition in 1952 in her hometown of Matsumoto in central Japan.
The decisive push to pack her bags came when she wrote to modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe, who encouraged Kusama to seek international recognition in the United States.
Kusama moved to Seattle in 1957 and then to New York, where she struggled to find her place as an Asian artist in the city's largely white, male-dominated creative scene.
'I was at the lowest point of poverty. One time, I couldn't eat for three days because I had no money', she once told Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
But she persevered and during her 16 years in New York became a prominent name in the avant-garde world.

By the time she returned to Japan in 1973, however, Kusama was burned out and checked herself into a psychiatric ward where she lived for the rest of her life.
And it was not until the 1990s that her vivid patterns, bold floral shapes and shiny steel orbs hit the mainstream, later providing the backdrop to countless selfies.
Pumpkins are her most famous motif, featuring heavily in her paintings and giant sculptures.
The artist called them her 'life partners', saying she had first grown to love their 'generous, unpretentious looks' as a child.
She was also one of the most expensive, with one of her 'infinity net' paintings fetching nearly $8 million at a 2019 auction.
She published several novels in her later years, while her exhibitions continued to draw huge crowds.
'My wish after my death is that the eternally bright future, the beauty of human love and my soul will be passed on', Kusama told reporters in 2017.
'Please love my artwork, even after I die'. — AFP