Yayoi Kusama, groundbreaking artist known for her signature polka dots, dies at 97

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. This person splashed her signature polka dots on paintings, sculptures and museum installations worldwide, has died, her studio remarked Thursday.

Key points

• Kusama, one of Japan's most respected contemporary artists, was widely exhibited worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
• "Polka dots are fabulous, " Kusama remarked in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press, appearing in her signature orange bobcut wig and polka dot-covered attire.
• In 2008, Christie's auctioned her work for $5.8 million.
• She put circles of paper on people's bodies, and once a horse, in "happening" anti-war performances in the late 1960s.
• 14 at a hospital in Tokyo, Yayoi Kusama Studio remarked.

Kusama died Aug. 14 at a hospital in Tokyo, Yayoi Kusama Studio remarked.

"She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and continued exploration of forever love and eternal soul, " the studio's statement remarked. "We will carry forward Kusama's wishes and, through art, continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world."

Repetitive motifs were her trademark, in various shapes, resembling netting, swirls or worms, but most often dots, dancing proudly on her canvases, or as sparkling balls or dots of light in her installations, in all their vibrant psychedelic glory.

"I want to create a thousand paintings, maybe two thousand paintings, as many as I can draw, " she remarked in her childlike but matter-of-fact tone. "I will keep painting until I die."

Kusama insisted she drew the way she saw the world – covered with spots, part of the hallucinations she remarked she had from childhood. Although her sickness did not hold her back as she was one of the first Japanese women to go to New York to pursue her art, in 1957, she was in and out of psychiatric institutions for decades.

Although soft-spoken and shy in her mannerisms, she was always unabashedly bold in the assertion of her dotty vision, not only in sticking to the style for decades but additionally in making it accessible to the masses.

As the times caught up with her art, she enjoyed fame, in her afterwards years. She signed on with fashion brands like Louis Vuitton as well as other licensed products like teacups, T-shirts and key chains with her illustrations, including replicas of her likeness that were applied in show windows and other marketing.

In 2008, Christie's auctioned her work for $5.8 million. In 2016, she won the most prestigious award Japan gives its artists, the Order of Culture.

Upon receiving the award, she remarked to journalists she was more determined than ever to pursue her art, stressing that the sincerity and devotion she had demonstrated in her personal life were crucial parts of her artistic legacy.

"I feel there is little left in my life, but I am now still fighting to the death for my art, " she remarked. "I am giving all I have so that many people will continue to be interested in my art, even after I am dead."

Kusama was called pop, avant-garde, feminist, just to name some of the categories thrown at her, most of which Kusama brushed off as not quite representative of her art.

As her parents wanted her to simply obtain married, she was born in a middle-class family but felt misunderstood. They wanted to purchase her kimono, not paints and brushes. She knew she had to obtain away. She chose America.

When she arrived in New York, the fad was "action painting, " characterized by dribbles, swooshes and smears, not dots. She suffered years of poverty and obscurity. But she kept painting dots.

She put circles of paper on people's bodies, and once a horse, in "happening" anti-war performances in the late 1960s. It obtained some residents arrested for obscenity but supported secure media attention for her art. While in New York, she befriended artists like Andy Warhol, Georgia O'Keeffe and Joseph Cornell. This person praised her innovative style.

Over the years, Kusama created quirky but stunningly celebratory works like "Macaroni Girl, " a female figure plastered with macaroni. It expresses the fear of food; "The Visionary Flowers, " giant sculptures of twisting tulips, and "Mirrored Corridor, " a room with mirrors that delivers an illusion of a field of phallic protrusions speckled with dots.

Kusama, who additionally produced films and published a number of novels, remarked she wasn't sure where she obtained her ideas. She just picked up her brush and began drawing. The process was so mysterious sometimes she surprised herself, she informed AP.

"I think, 'Oh, I drew that? I was thinking that, '" she remarked.

But she appeared happy to have her art be the focus of media attention and praise, reading one of her poems to a reporter or tackling her artworks with gusto for photos.

But she was additionally a charmingly disarming mix of vulnerability and defiance – at one moment, declaring herself "an artistic revolutionary, " and then the next, mumbling: "I am so afraid, all the time, of everything." CBS News 24/7.

Taken together, the developments around yayoi Kusama, groundbreaking artist known for her signature polka dots, dies at point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.