The Woman Who Covered the World in Polka Dots

Yayoi Kusama arrived in New York in 1957 with sixty kimonos, two thousand artworks she hoped to use as currency, and a letter of encouragement from Georgia O'Keeffe — who had received fourteen unsolicited watercolors from a stranger in rural Japan and decided, essentially, to change her life.

Within a few years, Kusama was making work that had no precedent.

She covered a rowboat in thousands of sewn soft tentacles, then wallpapered the entire gallery with a single repeated photograph of it — floor, walls, ceiling. She built furniture that sprouted fabric appendages like coral. She scattered 1,500 mirrored spheres across the lawn at the Venice Biennale, selling them for two dollars each until officials expelled her for treating art like hot dogs. She appointed herself High Priestess of Polka Dots and officiated a wedding in a SoHo loft in 1968.

In 1977, Kusama checked herself into a Tokyo psychiatric hospital. She has lived there ever since, walking across the street to her studio every morning. She is now the world's best-selling living female artist.