Yayoi Kusama

I just watched the film I Love Me which is about avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama. Here's the trailer:

In the film we get to see Kusama create a series of 50 black and white drawings.

We also get to see an overview of her entire body of work. From sculptures-

To installations-

And more.

We also get to look at themes that pop up in Kusama's art. For instance, Kusama's obsession with dots. They turn up in her work frequently.

Here is a portrait of her dotted mother from 1939.

The dots appear over-

And over-

Even on Snoopy!

What really touched me about watching the film was seeing how an artist deals with growing old. Kusama was born in 1929. Repeatedly throughout the film, we see how frustrated she is with her age. She celebrates two birthdays, but doesn't want anyone to know how old she is. She has trouble walking, but doesn't want to use a wheelchair, she thinks it's a sign of weakness. Someone tells Kusama that she's impressed that Kusama generates so much work in her "later years." Kusama says that she hasn't reached her later years, they're at least 5 years away.

We see more of her frustration during an interview with a reporter:

Reporter: As compared to mountain climbing, what stage are you as now?

Kusama: What stage am I now? Looking up, it's endless, I think. There are so many things I want to do so I want a life of 300 or 400 years.

Reporter: Do you mean you haven't even done half of what you want?

Kusama: On top of one mountain, I want to put on another mountain.

Kusama is able to channel this awareness of impending death into her work. An excerpt from her poem (she writes poems and novels along with creating all of her other art), "Resplendent Road"

I have spent life being far from attaining enlightenment.

Unable to sleep at night, I end up thinking about death

During these long years since childhood, suddenly I realize, in the path of my life, that I am facing death.

Having grown old, my black hair turning white,

The path to truth has withered and turned gray.

Forsaking the fame, am I to wander into the other world all by myself?

The movement is imminent.

Then love, future, and the flowering Shinano Road have been dyed gray.

Good-bye, my life. Fly away into the sky!

After Kusama finishes reading the poem she tells the camera, she talks about how great her poem is, how no one else would be capable of writing something like that, that "there's the work of genius in everything I do." Oh Yayoi Kusama, you're sassy and amazing. I want to be like you.