Kusama's signature splash of dots has now arrived in the realm of fashion in a new collection from French luxury brand Louis Vuitton —
bags, sunglasses, shoes and coats.Polka dots are fabulous," Kusama said
in a recent interview with The Associated Press, looking much younger
than her 83 years in a bright red wig, a polka dot dress she designed
herself and one of the new Louis Vuitton polka dot scarves.
Dots aside, Kusama cuts an odd figure for the fashion world. She has lived in a psychiatric institution for decades, battling demons that
feed her art.
Still, in her Tokyo studio, filled with wall-sized paintings throbbing with her repetitive dots, Kusama said the collaboration was a
natural, developed from her friendship with Louis Vuitton creative
director Marc Jacobs.
Louis Vuitton had already scored success 10 years ago by collaborating on a bag line with another Japanese artist, Takashi
Murakami. The latest Kusama collection is showcased at its boutiques
around the world, including New York, Paris, Tokyo and Singapore,
sometimes with replica dolls of Kusama.
"The polka dots cover the products infinitely," said Louis Vuitton, which racks up 24 billion euros ($29 billion) in annual revenue, a
significant portion in Japan. "No middle, no beginning and no end."
Dots started popping up in Kusama's work more than 50 years ago, from her early days as a pioneer Japanese woman venturing abroad.
Like most middle-class families in Japan those days, her parents, who ran a flower nursery, were eager to simply get her married. They
wanted to buy her kimono, not paints and brushes. She knew she had to
get away. And she chose America.
Dots may be fashionable today. But when Kusama arrived in New York in 1958, the fad was "action painting," characterized by dribbles,
swooshes and smears, not dots. She suffered years of poverty and
obscurity. But she kept painting the dots.
She put circles of paper on people's bodies, and once a horse, in "happening" anti-war performances in the late 1960s, which got some
people arrested for obscenity but helped get media attention for her
art. While in New York, she befriended artists like Andy Warhol, Georgia
O'Keefe and Joseph Cornell, who praised her innovative style. In 2008,
Christie's auctioned her work for $5.8 million. Her retrospective at the
Whitney Museum was previously at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Tate
Modern in London. Earlier this month, a major exhibition "Eternity of
Eternal Eternity" opened in her home town of Matsumoto, Nagano
prefecture, complete with polka-dot shuttle buses.
"I've always been amazed at Kusama's ability to pick up on and meld current trends in thoroughly original ways," said Lynn Zelevansky,
Carnegie Museum of Art director.
"During her New York years, her work fused Abstract Expressionist, Minimalist and Pop art elements, with an added dash of sexuality and the
baseness of bodily functions. She was a precursor of feminist art of
the 1970s and much of the work that was produced in the '80s around the
AIDS crisis," she said.
Dots had a rather sad beginning for Kusama. Since her childhood, she had recurring hallucinations. A portrait of her mother that she drew
when she was 10 years old shows a forlorn face covered with spots.
Immersing herself in her art was a way of overcoming her fears and
hallucinations.
Since her return to Japan nearly 40 years ago, Kusama has lived in a psychiatric hospital and remains on medication to prevent depression
and suicidal drives. But she commutes daily to her studio and works
viciously on her paintings.
