The infinite appeal of Yayoi Kusama, the artist who checked into a psychiatric hospital in 1977 and never left

People queue for hours to spend one minute in Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Rooms. Her stock in the art market is high too. But how to explain the nonagenarian artist’s stratospheric success? Alastair Smart looks at the Japanese artist’s enduring popularity

Portrait of Yayoi Kusama, courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro and David Zwirne (Yusuke Miyazak)

In November 1968, a few months shy of her 40th birthday, the artist Yayoi Kusama sent an open letter to the then President-elect of the United States, Richard Nixon. She offered to have sex with him – to “lovingly, soothingly, adorn [his] hard masculine body” – if he agreed to end US involvement in the Vietnam War.

It is not entirely clear whether she was serious, or whether Nixon replied. What’s undeniable, though – not to mention remarkable – is that more than half a century later, aged 94, Kusama is still creating a stir.

Her work, typically featuring striking patterns of polka dots, seems to be everywhere this year. A show of inflatable sculptures, Yayoi Kusama: You, Me and the Balloons, is the inaugural exhibition at Manchester’s £211 million new arts centre, Aviva Studios. Her pair of Infinity Mirror Room installations are still wowing visitors at Tate Modern. (They opened in 2021 and, due to popular demand, keep having their closing date postponed – currently it’s April 2024). Further afield, a major career retrospective, Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now, has just opened at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.