Yayoi Kusama, the internationally renowned Japanese avant-garde artist, died of multiple organ failure at a hospital in Tokyo on Aug. 14. She was 97. Yayoi Kusama Inc. and Yayoi Kusama Studio Inc. announced her death through the artist’s official website on Aug. 27. A private funeral was held for close family members.
In their official statement, the organizations paid tribute to Kusama’s lifetime of internationally acclaimed work across visual art, performance, fiction and poetry. “She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush,” the statement read, revealing that she remained devoted to her practice until the end of her life.
The organizations added that they would carry forward Kusama’s wishes and continue to bring hope and strength for the future to people around the world through art.
Widely known for her polka dots, Infinity Nets, pumpkins and Infinity Mirror Rooms, Kusama created a body of work that extended far beyond museums and galleries. She transformed the body, clothing, retail spaces, architecture and entire cityscapes into sites of artistic expression, leaving a lasting impact on the relationship between fashion and contemporary art.
Summary
Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama died of multiple organ failure at a hospital in Tokyo on Aug. 14, 2026. She was 97.
Kusama continued painting until her final days.
After moving to the United States in 1957, she developed a multidisciplinary practice in New York spanning painting, sculpture, installation and performance.
She founded the Kusama Fashion Company in 1968 and explored avant-garde expression through clothing and the body.
Kusama collaborated with Louis Vuitton on two major global projects in 2012 and 2023.
Her work across art, fashion, retail and urban space left a lasting influence on contemporary luxury and brand expression.
Forging a Distinct Avant-Garde Language in New York
Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929. From childhood, she experienced visions and hallucinations that inspired her depictions of repeating polka dots and nets. These motifs later developed into “self-obliteration,” a concept that became central to her creative practice.
She moved to the United States in 1957 and established herself in New York, where she began presenting a succession of experimental works. These included her Infinity Net paintings, which covered canvases in intricate webs; soft sculptures that enveloped furniture and everyday objects in proliferating fabric forms; and immersive installations constructed with mirrors and light.
The Whitney Museum of American Art has described Kusama as having quickly entered the center of the New York avant-garde after arriving in the United States. Her practice extended beyond painting and sculpture to encompass film, performance, body painting and public happenings, through which she continued to challenge the boundaries between the artwork, the body, the viewer and society.
Establishing an independent career as a Japanese woman in the predominantly male New York art world of the 1960s was far from straightforward. Yet Kusama resisted subordinating her work to any established artistic movement. Instead, she built a distinctive visual language rooted in her personal visions, compulsions and bodily experiences.
Fashion as Self-Expression and Social Commentary
Kusama’s relationship with fashion did not begin with the commercial collaborations with luxury brands that came later in her career.
During the 1960s, she created costumes for her happenings and performances, treating clothing and the body as integral parts of the artwork. Her body-painting events, in which nude participants were covered in polka dots, and her radically cut-out garments conveyed ideas surrounding sexuality, freedom, anti-war activism and resistance to established social conventions.
In 1968, she founded the Kusama Fashion Company. Her designs included garments covered in polka dots and nets, as well as dresses featuring boldly positioned openings that exposed parts of the body. Some of the pieces were sold at New York department stores, including Bloomingdale’s.
For Kusama, clothing was not simply another surface on which to reproduce the motifs of her paintings. It was a medium through which the wearer’s body could be absorbed into the artwork, extending her creative practice into everyday life.
At a time when it was far less common for artists to translate their visual languages into clothing and commercial environments, Kusama was already working across art, fashion, performance and business.
How Louis Vuitton Expanded Kusama’s Universe on a Global Scale
Kusama’s relationship with fashion later became visible on an unprecedented global scale through her collaborations with French luxury house Louis Vuitton.
In 2012, while Marc Jacobs was serving as the house’s artistic director, Louis Vuitton and Kusama unveiled their first collection together. Her repeating polka dots appeared across handbags, ready-to-wear, shoes, accessories, watches and jewelry.
The collaboration extended beyond the products themselves to Louis Vuitton stores, pop-ups and window displays around the world. The project coincided with Kusama’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York, creating a large-scale dialogue between contemporary art and luxury fashion.
Approximately a decade later, the artist and the house reunited for a second collaboration in 2023. In addition to her polka dots, the collection drew on Kusama’s pumpkins, flowers and faces, extending the motifs across leather goods, clothing, shoes, accessories and fragrances. Store façades and outdoor advertisements around the world were transformed with monumental representations of Kusama and large-scale polka-dot installations.
The significance of the project went beyond placing the work of a celebrated artist on luxury products. It translated the ideas of repetition, proliferation and immersion at the heart of Kusama’s practice into a brand experience spanning products, stores, advertising, digital content and urban space.
Artist collaborations have since become a familiar strategy within fashion. Yet the projects between Kusama and Louis Vuitton demonstrated how such a partnership could move beyond a limited product release and develop into a global cultural event.
The Power of an Instantly Recognizable Visual Language
Another important aspect of Kusama’s influence on fashion was the extraordinary strength of her instantly recognizable visual language.
Polka dots, nets, pumpkins, flowers, mirrors and vivid shades of red and yellow became inseparable from her work. Equally recognizable was Kusama herself, with her bright red wig and polka-dot clothing. The consistency between her work and personal appearance created a powerful cultural identity that could be recognized immediately around the world.
Yet this was more than an exercise in personal branding. By covering her clothing, body and surroundings in the same repeating patterns, Kusama appeared to dissolve the boundaries between herself and her work. Her public persona therefore became another expression of “self-obliteration,” the concept she pursued throughout her career.
That consistency also resonates with the way fashion brands now construct complete creative universes through products, stores, campaigns, events and the identities of their creative figures.
Kusama maintained the integrity of her artistic philosophy while extending her visual language from museums into popular culture and global commercial spaces. Rather than treating artistic and commercial expression as opposing forces, she approached them as different points of access through which her work could reach a broader public.
Yayoi Kusama’s Ever-Expanding Global Universe
After returning to Japan in 1973, Kusama continued working from Tokyo. Alongside her visual practice, she published poetry and fiction. In 1983, she received the Literary Award for New Writers from the Japanese magazine Yasei Jidai for her novel Hustlers Grotto of Christopher Street.
She received the Praemium Imperiale for painting in 2006 and Japan’s Order of Culture in 2016.
Kusama’s work has been presented at major institutions around the world, including Tate Modern, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Centre Pompidou.
A major retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, held from December 2024 to April 2025, attracted more than 570,000 visitors and set a new attendance record for the museum.
In 2026, Museum Ludwig in Cologne presented a major retrospective bringing together more than 300 works, from Kusama’s earliest drawings to a newly commissioned Infinity Mirror Room. According to Kusama’s official website, the exhibition is scheduled to travel to the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam on Sept. 11.
The polka dots and nets that began on canvas ultimately expanded into sculpture, mirrors, light, bodies, clothing, stores, architecture and cities. Kusama transformed the act of viewing her work into one of entering, wearing, experiencing and sharing it.
The ideas of infinity and self-obliteration that Kusama pursued throughout her life extended far beyond contemporary art into fashion, design, brand expression and popular culture. They will continue to be carried forward in new forms for generations to come.
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