KUSAMA princess of polka dots

THE PROJECT

KUSAMA: Princess of Polka Dots is a feature documentary work-in-progress about the avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama. Now in her late 70s, Kusama is considered Japan's greatest living artist. In 2006, she was named the Praemium Imperiale Laureate for lifetime achievement in painting - one of the world's most prestigious arts prizes. However, her contributions to the American art world remain misunderstood and over-looked.

This is the first American film to focus on Kusama's remarkable story. An underdog when she arrived in the U.S. in 1957, her only resource was her determination to succeed. On her first day in New York, Kusama climbed to the top of the Empire State Building, looked down, and made a decision to stand out from everyone she saw below and become a star. Eighteen months later she exhibited a revolutionary series of mural-sized paintings. During her stay in New York, Kusama's art went from delicate watercolors to meticulous, labor intensive oil paintings to sculptures and installations, and finally to sexually-charged public performance art protesting the Vietnam war and supporting civil rights and free love. Her art prefigured minimalism, pop and feminism. She rivaled Andy Warhol for press attention and the paparazzi dubbed her "The Polka Dot Princess" and "Dotty" due to the dots frequently seen in her work. As Kusama's art changed from labor intensive painting and sculpture (which she described as "art medicine"), to "Happenings," the mental illness she has battled since childhood grew worse. Kusama has attributed the dots frequently seen in her work to hallucinations that began during her childhood. Her Happenings did not generate revenue and also increasingly alienated her from the art press, who dismissed them as merely salacious. Struggling economically and emotionally, Kusama left New York in the early 70s and later checked herself into a Tokyo mental institution. Diagnosed with obsessional neurosis, Kusama has said she would have killed herself long ago if it were not for art.

During the 30 years Kusama has lived in a mental institution, she has written more than a dozen semi-autobiographical books while also continuing to paint and create sculpture and installation art. Kusama is an artistic pioneer who wanted her art to extend beyond the art elite and to advocate social change. The work she created in New York made an important contribution to the development of American art. Her accomplishments are all the more impressive when one considers how brave she was to leave behind the strict society in which she was raised in order to compete in the male-dominated New York art world in spite of language barriers, financial problems, and mental illness.

It is our objective to complete our documentary by the end of 2008 so that it will be ready for theatrical release in 2009 when Kusama turns 80 and a five decade retrospective of her work organized by The Film Arts Foundation will begin touring the US and Europe. Kusama has stated, "Time is finally turning a kind eye on me but it barely matters for I am dashing into the future." Tax-deductible donations of any amount are greatly appreciated and will help make our vision a reality.