Yayoi Kusama (草間彌生), the Japanese avant-garde artist known worldwide for her polka-dot motifs and mirrored installations, died on August 14 at a hospital in Tokyo due to multi-organ failure. She was 97.
Kusama built a decades-long career spanning painting, sculpture, performance, novels, and poetry, becoming one of the most internationally recognized artists to emerge from Japan. Her reach extended deep into the music world as well, shaping the work of artists both in Japan and abroad.
In Japan, the duo chelmico drew on Kusama’s influence for the music video of their song “Timeless,” inspired by the 2017 exhibition “Yayoi Kusama: My Eternal Soul” at The National Art Center, Tokyo, and a collaborative fashion collection between streetwear labels XLARGE and X-girl. Producer and musician TOWA TEI also enlisted Kusama to create the cover artwork for his 2013 album “LUCKY.”
Overseas, Cyndi Lauper incorporated Kusama’s art into the stage design of her “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour,” which began in 2024, with Lauper and her backing performers wearing polka-dot costumes during performances of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Musicians from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy have also released songs referencing Kusama over the years.
Kusama contributed directly to music herself. In 2010, she released the video installation “Song of a Manhattan Suicide Addict,” for which she wrote the lyrics, composed the music, and performed the vocals herself. The piece drew from her 1978 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, revisiting the psychological turmoil of her years in New York and the theme of “self-obliteration” central to her art. Its lyrics touched on antidepressants and visions of an endless stairway to heaven, echoing the hallucinations she experienced from childhood that became the wellspring of her creative work.
The Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward, which she founded, announced her death and paid tribute to her legacy in a statement, also confirming on Instagram that its ongoing exhibition, “KUSAMA’S POP,” will continue as scheduled through August 30.
Who is Yayoi Kusama?
Born in 1929, Yayoi Kusama rose to international prominence for her signature polka-dot and net patterns, immersive mirrored “Infinity Room” installations, and giant pumpkin sculptures. After building her career in New York’s avant-garde art scene in the 1960s, she returned to Japan and continued to work prolifically into her 90s, becoming widely regarded as one of the most influential and commercially successful female artists in the world. Her Shinjuku museum, which opened in 2017, remains a dedicated home for her work and archives.
Author’s Comment
I’ll say it plainly: there will never be another Kusama. This is a woman who turned her own hallucinations into infinity rooms and made the entire planet, from Shinjuku schoolkids to Cyndi Lauper’s tour bus, obsessed with polka dots. That’s not marketing, that’s alchemy. What gets me is how deeply she seeped into music without anyone really clocking it as "art world crossover" — chelmico, TOWA TEI, an actual Broadway-caliber pop icon restaging her farewell tour around Kusama’s imagery. That’s the mark of someone whose vision became wallpaper for the culture itself. And that 2010 song of hers? A 97-year-old avant-garde legend singing her own lyrics about antidepressants and staircases to heaven is more punk than half the acts topping the charts right now. Rest easy, Kusama-sensei. The dots will keep multiplying without you.
