All language subtitles for Kusama.Infinity.2018.720p.WEB-DL.h264.AC3-DEEP_track4_eng

I convert the energy of life...

into dots of the universe.

And...

that energy...

along with love...

flies into the sky.

I finish a drawing like this
in three days.

I come up with new ideas

and my canvas
cannot keep up with me.

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 Kamon
and Shigero Kusama.

My wish was to be a painter,

so I started making a lot of art
from the age of ten.

Since my childhood,
I was always painting dots.

When I see them,
my eyes get brighter,

and I am always moved.

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 her art school,
and her mother was furious.

One senses a family
that was, um...

wracked with interpersonal
problems.

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

Kusama's father gave up
his last name

to carry on the Kusama
family name.

He was powerless in the family,

so he had affairs
with other women.

Her mother would send

her daughter Kusama

to spy on him.

Witnessing her father
being with a different woman

must have been really traumatic
for a young, sensitive person.

Her mother knew
about his behavior,

but couldn't do anything
about it,

so instead released her anger
against her children.

The Kusama family

had a wholesale seed business.

They sold seeds for vegetables,
flowers and plants.

They had many employees.

Their business was the largest
and most established,

not only in Matsumoto City,
but in the entire region.

She's talked to me about
being in this field of flowers

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

Some kind of trauma
happened in the field.

I was surrounded
by so many flowers.

When I looked around,
I saw the flowers everywhere.

It was this sense of being
obliterated by flowers.

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've 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 am going to send several
watercolor 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."

I met Kusama

when I was about 20 years old.

There was a movie theater in
the central part of Matsumoto.

On the second floor
of this theater,

there was a little art gallery.

I think that was
her first exhibition.

I helped her with it.

There I was, this young man,

helping Kusama
hang her paintings.

Apparently, she was very happy
with me.

I couldn't understand
her paintings at the time.

I remember
they were very strange.

Back then, nobody came
to see her exhibition.

Everyone ignored her,

and no one
recognized her talent.

At the time,

Japan was
a very conservative country;

it was a
male-dominated society.

My mother wanted me
to become a housewife

and marry into a wealthy family,

so she took away
my canvas and paints.

At that time, I had many
marriage proposals to consider.

But since I wanted
to be a painter,

I rejected them all.

Both my parents were very angry.

Kusama was probably thrilled

when O'Keeffe wrote back to her.

"Dear Yayoi Kusama,

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

They are interesting.
But I live in the country,

and the art world
is in the city.

I'm 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."

She looked into potential

exhibition opportunities for me.

I was deeply moved
that there was such

a wonderful woman in America.

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.

At the time,

there were heavy regulations
on dollars and yen,

and it was prohibited to send
money from Japan to the USA.

It was very difficult to travel
to a foreign country.

Even though there were
many obstacles,

she decided to go there,
almost gambling her life.

I burned about 2,000
paintings by the riverside

and told myself that I'd paint
much better than these.

Kusama is among
the very first artists

in postwar 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.

When I first arrived
in New York,

I went to the top
of the Empire State Building.

I promised myself that
I would conquer New York

and make my name in the world

with my passion for the arts
and my creative energy.

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 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.

I was really poor at that time.

I was making lots of paintings.

Every day, I was drawing
and painting.

That's when I was
very fulfilled.

My goal was to create a new
history of art in the USA.

That's all I was thinking about.

When I was on the airplane
and looked outside the window,

I saw ever-expanding nets
on the ocean,

and I made them into my art.

- 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
of 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.

My friends asked me

why I kept painting dots
and infinity nets.

But I never listened to them.

I just kept trying to make
my own world.

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 into 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 over."

She had sent her paintings over.

Well, they refused it,
so they sent it back.

About four hours later,
here comes a lady

with one of these 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.

Brata Gallery was located
on 10th Street.

It was the birthplace
of Willem de Kooning

and Franz Kline.

See, that was the day
of the abstract expressionist.

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 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.

He 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 organizing 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,

the combination of the taxicabs
and the asphalt.

I just casually asked
how much it was.

They said it was $75.

And I... You know,
it seemed like a lot.

And the next week,

you know, it was
preying on my mind, huh...

'cause I really liked it
and everything.

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

And I paid $25 a week
or something.

An art dealer asked me

if I was interested in
meeting a reclusive artist.

She asked me
to wear my best dress

and come with her.

Mr. Cornell came out
from his house.

Joseph Cornell was a great,
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.

The gallery owner wanted to buy Mr.
Cornell's work,

but he didn't like selling it
to the galleries.

Mr. Cornell requested to be
introduced to a pretty woman,

and then he would sell his work.

Every day, he would do
telephone attacks,

so it was a lot to handle,
and he wouldn't give up.

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."

He was so into me.

He wrote lots
of love songs to me.

One time, he sent 14 letters
in a day,

and it almost broke my postbox.

And when I opened the mailbox,

all 14 letters came out
and scattered on the floor.

Eventually, I went out
with Mr. Cornell.

He didn't like sex,
and I didn't like sex,

so we didn't have sex.

I was cute and lovely and always
dressed nicely,

so I stood out.

So people would stop
and look at us like,

"Who is that couple?"

His mother was crazy.

When we were kissing
in the garden,

she came out from behind

and dumped a bucket
of cold water on me.

I got soaked,

and my nice embroidered dress
was completely ruined.

However, he wouldn't apologize
to me.

It wasn't, "Yayoi, I am sorry,"
but, "I am sorry, Mother."

So I was very disappointed.

Eventually, I told him
I couldn't go out with him

anymore because I had to paint.

Even then, he kept calling me
almost every day.

I fought very hard in New York.

I painted a lot,

and I made many net paintings.

One painting was 33 feet long.

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.

By doing Freudian analysis,

I analyzed my psychological
problems.

There's some thought
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.

My work is based on developing

my psychological problems
into art.

Obsession.

Accumulation is the result
of my obsession.

And that philosophy is...

the main theme of my art.

Accumulation means
that the stars in the universe

don't exist by themselves,

nor does the earth
exist by itself.

It's just like when I saw
the flowers.

I saw the flowers everywhere.

And when I chased them,

I felt panicked

and so overwhelmed
that I wanted to eat them all.

She calls them
the "penis chairs" herself.

She has a good eye
for what catches attention,

and if she'd called them
the "banana chairs,"

they probably wouldn't have
been as interesting

to so many people.

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.

You walk into 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
everybody was talking about it.

Claes Oldenburg
had a stiff piece,

made out of papier mâché.
And it was a suit.

Claes Oldenburg was making
sculptures in papier-mâché

which made a noise
if you tapped on it.

He was not doing soft sculpture
at the time.

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
a sculpture out of sewing.

It's very unmasculine.

When he did a show
in September, I was surprised.

If you looked around,
it was all soft sculpture.

There was a calendar,
and they created numbers

with soft sculpture.

And then, his wife
came over to me

and said, "I'm sorry, Yayoi."

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 One Thousand 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 has 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.

Andy Warhol came to the show
and said,

"Wow, fantastic, Yayoi!
I like this so much."

That influenced him,
and then he had a show.

He covered the wall
with images of a cow.

When I saw it,
I was very surprised.

Andy picked up what I did
and copied it in his show.

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 Peep Show,

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,
"Brrrrrr!"

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 with
perspective and infinity,

but it was all a fake
because you knew,

you the viewer, you were always
aware that you were the master,

that it was a painting that
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 Samara 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.

I became so depressed one day,

and the next day,
I became more depressed.

And then
I just jumped from the window.

If I had landed on my head,
I would have died,

but there was a bicycle,
and I fell on it.

Then the neighbors started
to gather around.

Sometimes, she would
simply appear at the door,

and I would realize
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.

Between the lightness
and the darkness

of people's shadows...

a bridge to life has stopped me
from suicide.

Uncertainty of the unknown,
and the fear,

a constant struggle.

Can I overcome this?

And get through today?

And tomorrow and the next day?

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

if not more, in Europe.

- I went to Italy in 1966
- to put my work

in the Venice Biennale.

I ordered 1,500 mirror balls

to be made in a factory
in Florence.

She put mirror balls

in front of the Italian
Pavilion without invitation.

I put a sign up saying,
"You can buy your narcissism."

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.

However,
the Venice Biennale officials

asked me not to sell them.
And I asked them,

"Why can't I sell my art
like ice cream or hot dogs?"

She begins in this kimono,

and then 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 these
photographs of her in leotards,

with her artwork.

She was always aware
of the publicity element,

and it gets a lot of attention.

Many people were interested

in my avant-garde art works.

I felt certain that the art
of the future

was not nude bronze sculpture,

but the public was more excited
about pop art.

In New York City,
on 53rd Street,

stands the Museum of Modern Art.

Kusama presented this happening

in the sculpture garden of MOMA.

I protested against
the closed-minded system

of the museums.

Their performance lasted
until a 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
'cause 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 color,

to position to where
she thought it should be.

I was a runaway.

I felt much more comfortable
with gay boys.

It was safer.

A lot of people around me
were gay,

because I did not have
a boyfriend,

I was not married,
and I did not have a child.

I did a homosexual wedding
happening.

All the homosexuals were hiding,

so I wanted them to be out in
the public without any shame.

I wanted the public to
recognize their existence,

so I did a demonstration.

It's quite
extraordinary to look back

and realize that Kusama
was performing gay marriages

about 40 years ago.

Now I am making a movie,

which is named
Kusama's Self-Obliteration.

Kusama wandered
into the Gate Theater,

and she came over and said,

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

And I agreed.

- I made a movie called
- Kusama's Self-Obliteration,

in which I covered myself
in polka dots

until I completely disappeared.

The universe is full of nothing,

ever expanding
and ever destroying itself.

Just like a drop
that falls in water,

I completely disappear
in the universe.

I seek the energy of life.

And I turn it into art.

She had won a prize
in Belgium of this film.

She invited me to come
to celebrate the opening.

I realized when I got
to the box office

that we were not
properly dressed.

Everybody was in black
leather jackets

and all kinds
of hippie-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.

The threat
of the draft was a big deal.

It was a big deal.
Very different than anything

we're experiencing today.

These young women and men
were sent to Vietnam

and they got injured and killed.

And many returned home
and became drug addicts.

I questioned the fact
that Americans

were doing something like that.

I thought it was wrong.

She said, "Nudity, it's 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.

Since my childhood,
we were forcefully

involved in the war,
and everything was confusing.

Even among the students,

the boys were drafted
to be soldiers.

The girls had to work
in military factories

to make things...

necessary for the war.

I was forced to go
to a military factory

and sew parachutes.

She wasn't absorbed

into this totalitarian
government.

A lot of people were
very much brainwashed.

When I voiced that I was
against the war,

even my friends and family told
me that I had lost my mind.

I believe such a horrible war
should never be repeated.

I made my art to try and change
people's minds

about the love in the world
that can last forever.

And I wanted to spread hope

to the world through my artwork.

In New York, I did many big
anti-war happenings.

Several thousand people

protested against the war
with me.

I had a naked happening,
and the police came.

They came to arrest me

and asked me not to do
the naked happening there.

News about Kusama's
naked performances in America

reached Japan as tabloid news,

and people really attacked her.

People said things like, "She is
the shame of Matsumoto City,"

or "A woman like that
should be killed."

Her name was even removed
from the alumni list...

of her high school.

When she did a lot
of naked happenings,

and it's being written up
in Japanese magazines,

the family was so ashamed that
they went to every bookstore

on the day when the magazines
were sold

and then bought everything, and
then hide it in their house.

Nixon was reelected 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 were 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
that 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
had 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 recognized,
and she was a middle-aged lady.

I felt that Japan was a hundred
years behind the U. S.

when I returned to Japan.

They treated me like
a very scandalous presence.

All the journalists
were very backwards,

and they wanted to portray me
in a negative way.

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.

It was as if an invisible

curtain rolled down,

and I felt separated
from my surroundings.

And then, when I was drawing,

the drawing would expand outside
of the canvas to fill the floor,

and when I looked
in the distance,

I would see a hallucination,

and I would get surrounded
by that vision.

Because my childhood memories
were traumatic,

I became very depressed.

I couldn't paint anymore.

And then...

I tried to commit suicide.

And so Kusama
finds this hospital,

where the doctor is
interested in art therapy,

and she checks herself in.

And from the security
of that environment,

she's able to work again.

There is 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 they come at 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 watercolors in 1952.

The first time I met Ms.
Kusama and saw her artwork

was at an exhibition
of her collages.

Since her time in New York,

she was already famous
as a scandal queen.

So I thought of her
as a scary woman,

and at the exhibition,
she was sitting there,

but I tried not to look at her.

I just looked at her art.

When I saw these works,

I thought she was
an incredible genius.

I was completely moved.

And I felt a sense of duty

to have her recognized both
nationally and internationally.

Ms. Kusama was very
misunderstood in Japan

and almost completely forgotten
in New York.

She was a genius, so I wanted
to re-legitimize her.

However, the chance didn't come
around so quickly.

I still didn't have any power.

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 favor.

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
I was carrying pornography.

And I had to argue
with the customs guys

that actually this was art.

In 1989, I curated
the exhibition

A Retrospective

at the Center for International
Contemporary Arts, or CICA.

It was a small
nonprofit institution.

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
watercolors from the '50s.

A reevaluation of Kusama's work

was starting to happen
in New York and in Japan.

Luckily, the Foreign Minister

asked me to be a commissioner
for the Venice Biennale.

I thought it was
a great opportunity.

However, since Kusama lived
in a psychiatric hospital,

the government official
became timid about sending her

as a representative
of the country.

"How can she represent Japan?"
So I kept that part a secret.

The proposal passed,

and I brought her
to the Venice Biennale.

Before Kusama's solo show,

Japan had always shown two
or three artists

at the same time.

But for Kusama, I knew that
she needed to have a solo show,

because of her strong
personality and talent.

I convinced the organizers
to do the first solo show

in the Japanese Pavilion.

However, a psychiatrist
came with her

and stayed in the room
next to her.

Now, she is a lot more stable,

but at the time she was...

afraid of having
a nervous breakdown.

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 Biennale
Pavilion

was an huge, huge transformation

of how Kusama was received
and appreciated and recognized

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.

Consequently, Lynn Zelevanksy

decided to do a retrospective.

Oh, I'm so glad to see you here.

The exhibition that we organized

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 gonna 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.

After she returned to Japan,

she called me once
for some reason.

She now calls me
almost every day,

regardless of the time.

Even as her paintings began
to sell for a lot of money,

and she became more successful,

she was still lonely.

She had been fighting
and fighting,

and then she started getting
more recognition.

So she started to see the light.

Her work is still powerful,
but her world is brighter.

She hasn't lost her drive...

now that she is
an accomplished artist,

but rather her new fantasy world

is manifesting on a very
large scale.

Ms. Kusama doesn't do
any drafts.

She comes up with something
instantly

and then makes a perfect work
in the moment.

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 has had five million
museum visitors since 2013.

And there's not one artist
in the world

who has the same
kind of audience.

She's officially the most
successful living artist.

She hated Matsumoto,

because they rejected her,
they made fun of her,

and they embarrassed her.

Hence, she didn't go back
to Matsumoto very often.

Until the 1990s,
her artistic activities

still weren't fully appreciated
in Japan,

especially in a small town
like Matsumoto.

That didn't change

until the Matsumoto City Museum
of Art was built.

Since I was a member
of the City Council,

I really pushed for her work
to be included in the museum,

so that she could be recognized.

Matsumoto City Museum
of Art is now a place

one can always see
a lot of Kusama's art.

That makes her happy

as well as the citizens
of Matsumoto.

There are many children...

that come to the museum
just to see Kusama's art.

The Matsumoto children
who can start

their art education with Kusama
are very blessed.

She had a big show in Matsumoto.

At the reception, Kusama said,

"I was finally able
to bring home the crown."

When people in the audience
heard that,

they almost wept.

They were so happy that Kusama
was finally able to come home

to a hero's welcome.

Now that my life is
in the last phase,

I am putting all of my energy
into my art.

I hope that the power of art

can make the world
more peaceful.

Among waves of people,

I have managed to survive
this long life.

How many times did I think...

about putting a knife
to my neck, seeking death?

I collected my thoughts
and got up again.

I wish for life's bright
sunshine.

I want to live forever.

How long
have you all been waiting?

- Few hours.
- This isn't even

the end of the line.
The end's around the corner.