All language subtitles for BBC.Arena.2019.Kusama.Infinity.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org_track3_eng

Kusama was born in 1929 in Nagano
Prefecture in Matsumoto City,

which is a rural,
provincial castle town.

She was the youngest
of four children,

born to Kaman and Shigeru Kusama.

Kusama describes drawing as a child,

and her mother sneaking
up behind her and tearing

the picture out of
her daughter's hands.

And that sense of hysteria
and panic, I think,

informs Kusama's own
process of making art,

where she is working
so fast and so furiously,

to finish a work before
it is torn from her.

There was a deal that her mother
made with her, that if she went

to etiquette school,
she could also go to art school.

And Kusama made the deal.

And apparently, she never went
to the etiquette lessons,

but did go to art school.

And her mother was furious.

One senses a family that was racked
with interpersonal problems.

Her father and mother did not
have such a great relationship.

Her mother would send her daughter,
Kusama, to spy on him.

Witnessing her father
being with different women must

have been really traumatic
for a young, sensitive person.

She has talked to me
about being in this field

of flowers, on her family's farm,
where she had wandered in.

Some kind of trauma
had happened in the field.

So much of Kusama's art seeks
to recreate that experience,

in one form or another.

It is literally an experience
of being lost

into her physical environment,

of losing her selfhood,
in this space that is moving

rapidly, and expanding rapidly.

She came across
Georgia O'Keeffe's work.

O'Keeffe engaged with the natural
world in a way that is sort

of fantastic and dreamlike

and deeply realist, as well.

I think there was something
about the work, and that here

was a great American female artist.

Something clicked in Kusama's
head and she thought,

"This is a person that I aspire
to be, this is somebody

who can mentor me."

And so she wrote
to Georgia O'Keeffe.

"Dear Miss O'Keeffe,

Will you please forgive me
to interrupt you while you are

very busy, and let me
introduce myself to you?

I am a Japanese female painter.

There are very few opportunities
to see your work in Japan.

I have only seen one
of your original paintings,

Black Iris.

It gave me a strong impression.

I felt that I had, in me,
something which seemed very related

to what lay at the bottom
of Black Iris.

Some days ago, I thought
of finding your address.

I'm going to send several
watercolour paintings to you.

I'm only on the first step
of a long difficult life

of being a painter.

Will you kindly show me the way
to approach this life?

Yours faithfully,
Miss Yayoi Kusama."

Kusama was probably thrilled
when O'Keeffe wrote back to her.

"Dear Yayoi Kusama:

Your two letters came to me,
and your watercolours also came.

They are interesting.

But I live in the country,
and the art world is in the city.

I am not young, you know.

I have had all of the things
you wish to move toward.

In this country, an artist
has a hard time making a living.

You will just have to find
your way as best you can.

But I wish the very best for you.

Sincerely, Georgia O'Keeffe."

O'Keeffe gave her advice to come
to the United States,

to bring her work with her,
to be unafraid, to show

it to anybody who she thought
might be interested.

The opposition of her family,
and the challenges to become

an accomplished artist,
must have driven this notion that,

at some point,
she would have to escape.

Kusama is among the very first
artists in post-war Japan

to make her way to New York,
where she takes up residence

in 1958.

She knew, in herself,
that she had a will, and a vision

that was enormous.

She had to smuggle
money into the country.

She came to America with dollar
bills sewn in her kimono.

Kusama was coming into
the New York art world

and she was a single woman.

Previous to that, women
could be included in group shows,

not one-person shows.

Even some of the women dealers
wouldn't show women.

I used to see
her cry coming back from...

from a visit to the galleries.

She was very aggressive.

She wanted so much
to be in the galleries,

but couldn't even get through
the door.

She was twice the other -
not only was she a woman

in a male-dominated art world,
but she was also Japanese.

She was not taken seriously
by the establishment.

She's wearing current fashions.

And then she starts wearing kimonos
for special occasions.

There's a lot of mystery and allure
to being an Asian female.

She's trying to survive
in this world.

There is a painting
called Pacific Ocean,

from 1958.

And Kusama said that
that is really the origin

of infinity net painting.

One of the reasons why Pacific Ocean
was so important for her is because,

when she grew up in the Mountain
province, Matsumoto city,

the people who were living there,
you know, their dream of life

was really to go
beyond the mountains,

to see the Pacific Ocean.

I remember a particular gallery
opening where Kusama

and I were intensely engaged
in the potential development

of her future, starting with funds
and that she wanted to know,

"Carolee, is there an important man
here in this opening?

I have to meet him."

And she was blatant,
and aggressive, and overt.

And she was going to find a patron.

I would see Kusama at the next
opening with a handsome,

conventional young man
following behind her

who had rented her the apartment
or the equipment or the materials.

She did everything there was to do
to get ahead.

She was trying to get Sidney Janis.
That was the number one gallery

at that time.

One day, one of the boys
came and said,

"Ed, I think your
friend just sent some paintings."

She had sent her paintings over.

Well, they refused.

So they sent it back.

About four hours later,
here comes a lady with one

of those real minks.

And they said they'd like
to see her paintings.

She had told them that
she's in the gallery.

That was Yayoi.

A lot of artists couldn't get
into the galleries,

so we started this co-op
gallery, the Brata.

I arranged for her to
have a show there.

That was the day of
abstract expressionism.

When she showed, her work
looked so different.

Because there was that air.

The paintings were quite tapestry
like, but they had a wonderful

tactile quality.

The impasto, it continued
over the whole surface.

Donald Judd reviewed that show.

His first line in the
review is,

"Yayoi Kusama is an original
painter."

He went on to talk
about the paintings.

He really praised them.

Don was a sculptor and a critic.

A very serious reviewer.

I had a gallery in Washington.

Kusama appeared one day,

completely unannounced,
with a young man.

They carried in one
painting after another.

I'd never seen anything like it.

They had some kind of magic.
You couldn't stop looking at them,

and you didn't know
where they were going.

They were hypnotic.

I was organising an exhibition
of contemporary Japanese art.

Yayoi was not well-known.

She was nobody.

And these other artists were all
men, and were very well-known.

There was an altercation
at one point...

She tried to destroy the whole show.

It was bloody hell.

I went into most of the galleries,
and I saw Yayoi's paintings.

The one that stood out
was the yellow one.

I saw New York in terms of yellow
and black, and the combination

of taxi cabs and the asphalt.

I just casually asked
how much it was.

They said it was $75.

And, you know,
that seemed like a lot.

And the next week, you know,
it was preying on my mind.

Because I really liked
it and everything.

And after all, I said,
"OK, I'll do it."

And I paid $25 a week, or something.

Joseph Cornell was a great
and important artist.

Cornell was so inspiring
and strange,

and deeply, deeply suppressed.

He was a surrealist,
and he lived with his mother

on Utopia Heights.

Cornell, during the years
after his father died,

from a very young age,
was supporting his mother

and disabled brother.

They would talk on the phone.

And she would say, "Joseph,
I have to go now."

And he said, "No, Yayoi,
just put the phone down.

I'll wait for you to come back."

So, Kusama would go out,
completely forget about Cornell,

come back a couple of hours later,
find the phone on her bed,

pick it up, and Joseph
would say "Hi, Yayoi."

When you do a painting of that size,
in some sense, it stops

becoming a painting

and it becomes a spatial universe.

Her health was always something
that she worried about,

a great deal.

And I suggested to her that
she see a psychiatrist.

There's some thought
that she might have had some

traumatic experiences, as a child.

She describes coming across her
father in a compromising situation.

It's the sort of Freudian notion
that you respond to those kind

of traumas with, kind
of repetitive obsessional focus,

on the object of your fear.

For Kusama, that fear,
and she talks about it

very explicitly, was a fear of sex.

Her diagnosis is obsessive
compulsive neurosis.

Once something enters into her mind,
she cannot get rid of it.

She calls them 'the penis
chairs' herself.

She has a good eye for
what catches attention.

And if she had called them the

banana chairs, they probably
wouldn't have been as interesting

to so many people.

Maybe... Maybe so many people
wouldn't have wanted to sit on them!

But I can tell you,
we have to fight to keep people

off this chair!

We were walking to this group show,
there was Rosenquist.

There's Donald Judd.

And Andy Warhol.

And yet, your eyes always
return to Kusama's couch.

Nobody bought them.

But then everybody
was talking about it.

Claes Oldenburg had a stiff piece,
which was made out of papier-mache.

And it was a suit.

Oldenburg's loft is a factory,
where he works out the problems

of handling new materials,
in new ways, with the help

of his wife, Pat,
and other assistants.

I don't think, until
he saw Kusama's artwork,

he thought of actually creating
the sculpture out of sewing.

It's very un-masculine.

Suddenly, he was
an international star.

This really discouraged
Kusama so much, because,

you know, she also wanted to make
her way up with her soft sculpture.

That really made her depressed.

The installation of the 1000 boats
show, which is her first real

installation work,
that was very innovative.

And what she does is
she's covered a rowboat

and its oars with these stuffed
soft sculpture protrusions.

Then she's also photographed
the boat, and made a poster,

and covered all of the walls
of the gallery with that photograph.

So the boat is sitting in the middle
of the photographs of itself.

The idea of covering
all of the walls and creating

an installation like that
was very innovative.

She got very, very shocked.

She couldn't go out from her studio.

And she had to cover
all her studio windows.

She didn't want no-one
to get her ideas.

She was living secretly,
and creating a lot of sculptures.

Kusama was creating work
of equal importance,

yet she wasn't getting
the same backing.

Sexism plays a very
major role in this.

And maybe racism as well.

She was taking away
your ability to focus,

breaking all boundaries of space.

The exhibitions that I had,
in particular the peepshow,

that did the job.

It was an octagonal room,
and there were openings

where you could stick your head in.

The ceiling of it set
up a series of lights.

The rhythm of that machine was...

When men started devoting
themselves to shooting rockets

with themselves in them,

up into the stratosphere,

people became more
conscious of infinity.

And she caught that.

There were many artists,
from the Renaissance on,

who were involved in
perspective and infinity.

But it was all a fake,
because you knew, you the viewer,

you're always aware
that you were the master.

That it was a painting,
it was encompassed by a frame,

and the artist was
playing with space.

But it wasn't enveloping you.

This was the great breaking point
in art.

No longer are you, the viewer,
the master. She's the master.

Lucas Samaras was active
in the avant-garde radical art scene

of New York in the 1960s.

In 1966, about seven months
after Yayoi Kusama's infinity mirror

room, Lucas Samaras shows a quite
similar construction,

a room-like mirrored environment

at the far more
established Pace Gallery.

That room was unlike anything
Samaras had ever made before.

I think it's fair to say,
unequivocally, that Kusama

was the first artist,
in New York, or anywhere,

to create a mirrored environment.

There is no question
that she was not really taken

up by the establishment in the
'60s, when she was doing all

that incredible innovative work.

Sometimes she would simply peer
at the door, and I would realise

that she wasn't well.

And I'd take her upstairs
and put her to bed

and look after her

for whatever it took,

a week or ten days.

She needed to have somebody
take care of her.

By the mid-60s, Kusama
is showing as much,

if not more, in Europe.

Selling your art for a few dollars
to anybody who comes by

is a very subversive idea.

Art is supposed to be expensive,
precious, out of reach.

She begins in this kimono,
and when she's asked to leave,

she gets rid of the kimono.

And she is dancing around
and lying amid the balls,

and there are all
of her in leotards,

with her artwork.

She was always aware
of the publicity element.

And it gets a lot of attention.

In New York City, on 53rd St,
stands the Museum of Modern Art.

Kusama presented these happenings
in sculpture garden of MoMA.

Their performance lasted until MoMA
guard started to expel them.

But it was really successful.

My friend, Billy, told me
that I could stay at this loft

if I allowed her to paint me.

And I was quite excited,
cos I'm thinking portrait.

It never occurred to me
that this literally meant paint you.

It's hard to define
the expression in her eyes.

She was not looking at you as though
you were a human being.

This was a thing that she was going
to manipulate to colour,

to position, to where
she thought it should be.

I was a runaway. I felt much more
comfortable with gay boys.

It was safer.

It's quite extraordinary
to look back and realise

that Kusama was performing gay
marriages about 40 years ago.

Now I'm making a movie,
Kusama's Self-Obliteration.

Kusama wandered in to the Gate
Theater and she came over and said,

"You want to shoot my happening
when it's going on?"

And I agreed.

She had won a prize
in Belgium for this film.

She invited me to come
celebrate the opening.

I realised when I got to the box
office that we were not

properly dressed.

Everybody was in black leather
jackets, and all kinds of hippy

type of clothing.

I felt a little bit
embarrassed, but we went in.

We had finished seeing the film,
and were ready to leave.

Kusama said, "You can't leave now.

People are going to undress."

So I told my husband and he said,
"Well, let's go home."

And then I turned to my
mother and she said,

"Let's stay."

And so we stayed.

# Love, love, love, love,
love is what you need

# You can't buy it, you can't sell
it, you can't change its name

# But you can share it, you can send
it, give it all the same

# Love, love, love, love,
love is what you need

# Love is what you need

# Love is what you need... #

The threat of the draft was a big
deal. It was a big deal,

very different than anything
we're experiencing today.

She said, "Nudity is
such a beautiful thing.

Why do we have to send
this beautiful body

to the war as soldiers?"

She's against the war
because of her wartime experience.

She wasn't absorbed
into this totalitarian government.

A lot of people are
very much brainwashed.

When she did a lot
of naked happenings,

and it being written

up in Japanese magazines,
the family was so ashamed

that they went to every book store
on the day when the magazine

was sold, and they bought everything
and they hide it in their house.

Nixon was re-elected president.

The country became
far more conservative,

and I think it just became
more difficult for artists

who were really pushing
the boundaries, as Kusama was,

to find a place to work
and to function, both

artistically and economically.

The system is set up to support
white male artists who are carrying

on the tradition of modernism,
but there's also elements

of the marketplace,
who the collectors are,

who the curators and museum
directors are, and who they feel

most comfortable about promoting.

Kusama, who was a marginal
figure in every way -

she was a woman, she was Japanese,
she was completely outside of

this Western cultural sphere -

she did not get the same kind of
support that the male artists did.

The respect she had earned
in the early 1960s

had been relatively dispersed by her
increasingly radical and,

I suppose, populist,
attention-seeking activities,

so she was, you know,
increasingly disorientated,

disillusioned and depressed.

She went home.

In 1973, I turned on
the television, and Channel 28

was having a fundraiser
which was an art auction.

I saw this piece by Yayoi Kusama,
so I bid $75, and I waited

and then I heard
the next bid was $100.

About 20 minutes later,
I got a phone call and they asked me

if I was very serious
about purchasing this piece,

so I said, "Yes", and it seems
like the person who did purchase

the piece was not.
He was just making a joke.

And at that time, I would be asking
different curators if they ever

heard of Yayoi, and most of them
have not heard of her

or did not know

what has happened to her.

To go back to Tokyo and to start
from scratch again was quite

extraordinary because she wasn't
known there and she hadn't

been recognised and she was
a middle-aged lady.

This was the time when she was
suffering most from rejection

of the Japanese art world.

The family wasn't
there to support her.

That became a very,
very bitter experience.

At a time, she's lost her father,

I think there were obstacles of some
mental health issues.

And so, Kusama finds this hospital
where the doctor's interested in art

therapy and she checks herself in.

And from the security
of that environment,

she's able to work again.

There was a need to fill the hours
of every day with activity,

and the activity that lent itself
most easily to her circumstances

was collage.

From seeds, to insects,

to small,
scary, supernatural creatures.

They're very dark.

And there comes a time
when she's lost her father.

They're full of this imagery
of natural life cycles.

She really had to start
from scratch, looking into galleries

to exhibit her pieces.

What was very sad is she had to rent
this place in Matsumoto City

where she exhibited
her watercolours in 1952.

Over the course of
the late '70s and '80s, Kusama

had been obliterated
from the histories.

What the Village Voice
called her "lust for publicity"

simply fell out
of critical favour.

No museums and no galleries
in New York had shown Kusama's

work in over 20 years.

She showed at the Fuji TV Gallery
and it was my encounter

with her work, sculptural work
of the early to mid-1980s,

that really inspired in me
the will and the conviction

that an exhibition of Yayoi Kusama
had to happen in New York.

We went to visit Kusama in Japan
and collected papers,

documents, photographs
and publicity, which featured

a lot of nudity.

When I was bringing these boxes
back, I was stopped at the customs

because they thought
that I was carrying pornography,

and I had to argue with
the customs guys that,

actually, this was art.

In 1989, I curated the exhibition
Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective

at the Center For International
Contemporary Arts or CICA.

And it was a sensational exhibition.

Kusama had not been
to the United States

since she had left in 1973.

We attempted a full retrospective,

going back to her early watercolours

from the '50s.

I went to the Venice Biennale.

At first I thought,
"Well, gee, look at that!

"That's Yayoi," and there she was.

I was so glad to see her.

For her to have the exhibition
for the 1993 Venice Biennial

Pavilion was a huge,
huge transformation of how Kusama

was received and appreciated
and recognised within

the Japanese art world.

So she went from crashing the party
and inserting her own work

without invitation or permission
to being the first Japanese woman

to represent Japan
at the '93 Biennale.

Oh, I'm so glad to see you!

The exhibition that we organised
by the Los Angeles County Museum

Of Art was called Love Forever:
Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968.

Sometimes you can feel something,
almost like a tidal wave

under your feet,
when you're working on something,

and you know that this artist
is going to be big.

She's created this amazing
situation for herself.

The studio is two blocks
from the hospital,

so she just walks to the studio
every day to do her work

and then she returns
to the hospital at night.

Clearly the strains
and stresses of life,

the memories,
have forced her to withdraw,

but what she's always

done, she has always managed
that process incredibly well,

and I think there's a sort
of a managing madness about Kusama

which is so utterly sane.

She's used her trauma
to enormously productive ends.

She's celebrated all over the world,

so she has collectors all over the
world and she has museum exhibitions

all over the world.

Her work transcends boundaries.
It really does appeal

to a very broad group of people.

Social media is, for sure,
a very specific phenomenon as part

of her success.

She's had 5 million museum visitors
since 2013 and there's not one

artist in the world who has that
same kind of audience.

She's officially the most
successful living artist.

# A stillness flowers
sitting on my windowsill

# And from this vantage point
it's dying

# Time passes on

# Time it moves past her

# A thousands more dawns

# And mornings after

# I've been waiting

# Such a long time

# Like a sunset sitting perfectly
still

# You think you're moving but
your idling

# Stand in line

# There's no-one behind

# No-one before her

# I've been waiting

# Such a long time

# This moment

# I'll seize it

# And this time you know that I'll
mean it

# La-la-la-la

# I've been waiting

# Such a long time

# Such a long time. #