‘What We Lost in Kusamaland’ by Jerry Saltz
September 2, 2026
During her final decades, Yayoi Kusama, who died last week at 97, was most well-known for her Infinity Rooms and the lines of fans waiting to take selfies inside. These spectacles turned a radical artist into one of the most generic brands on Earth and made it harder to see the incredible depth of her body of work.
“My art originates from hallucinations only I can see,” she once said. It is one of the great artist statements. Born into a prosperous but unhappy family, the owners of a seed nursery, Kusama saw visions of flowers from an early age, dots that spread across surfaces and spoke to her. By making them the sole focus of her practice later on, she externalized the internal condition.