‘The only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art’: remembering Yayoi Kusama

In the history of the National Gallery of Victoria, their most successful ticketed exhibition did not feature the work of Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso. It was of the veteran Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama, who has died aged 97. Held over the summer months in 2024–25, the Melbourne exhibition attracted 570,537 ticketed visitors. Kusama’s exhibitions throughout the world have attracted huge crowds. Her infinity mirror rooms, sprawling seas of polka dots, dancing pumpkins and…