Kusama Quotes & Sayings

More and more, I think about the role of the arts, and as an artist, I think that it's important that I share the love and peace. — Yayoi Kusama

Polka dots can't stay alone. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environments. — Yayoi Kusama

I have a flood of ideas in my mind. I just follow my vision. — Yayoi Kusama

A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can't stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement ... Polka-dots are a way to infinity. — Yayoi Kusama

I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned. — Yayoi Kusama

While producing art works, illusions appear from time to time due to my mental illness. Every day is a struggle for me. — Yayoi Kusama

With just one polka dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe. Pursuing 'philosophy of the universe' through art under such circumstances has led me to what I call 'stereotypical repetition.' — Yayoi Kusama

I believe that eyes are very important motifs. That's something that can discern the peace and love. — Yayoi Kusama

I will keep painting until I die. — Yayoi Kusama

Pain in all its forms is also a message, a kind of distress signal to our hearts and minds. There are times when it's really important to tune into that message and just listen to it. — Karyn Kusama

We have to accept that making movies is a never-ending process of occasional progress, frequent setbacks, and unexpected curveballs being thrown our way. Navigating that process requires stamina, curiosity, openness, and creative fire. — Karyn Kusama

I never have a plan of what I am going to draw. — Yayoi Kusama

When I paint, some things come out, and I don't know. Maybe it's because I have such talent as a painter. — Yayoi Kusama

Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art. — Yayoi Kusama

My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. — Yayoi Kusama

All of my works are steps on my journey, a struggle for truth that I have waged with pen, canvas, and materials. Overhead is a distant, radiant star, and the more I stretch to reach it, the further it recedes. But by the power of my spirit and my single-hearted pursuit of the path, I have clawed my way through the labyrinthine confusion of the world of people in an unstinting effort to approach even one step closer to the realm of the soul. — Yayoi Kusama

If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago, — Yayoi Kusama

Basically, my idea and explorations on fashion have not changed; however, I believe I'm going state-of-the-art on fashion. — Yayoi Kusama

I have done all the work myself, not assistants. That's why I'm in a wheelchair: I've been doing it physically - it's hard labour - throughout my life. — Yayoi Kusama

My mother was against me being an artist. She just wanted me to marry a rich man. — Yayoi Kusama

Since my childhood, I have always made works with polka dots. Earth, moon, sun and human beings all represent dots; a single particle among billions. — Yayoi Kusama

Painting bodies with the patterns of Kusama's hallucinations obliterated their individual selves and returned them to the infinite universe. — Yayoi Kusama

The country of Britain is wonderful because of its royalty. — Yayoi Kusama

New York is the place that made my and other artists' dreams come true by giving us a chance to realise our ideas and concepts. It was a great place for making a presentation of artistic creation. — Yayoi Kusama

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art. — Yayoi Kusama

Georgia O'Keeffe proposed that I live with her. She was in New Mexico then, and I wanted to be in New York. — Yayoi Kusama

You should create a work that is so valuable it might eventually sell at a high price, but you've got to concentrate on how you create that artwork. — Yayoi Kusama

I want to create a thousand paintings, maybe two thousand paintings, as many as I can draw. — Yayoi Kusama

It doesn't matter at all for me that I work in hospital or anywhere with limited space. Every day, I'm creating new works with all my might. — Yayoi Kusama

People ask about art and commercialism. I think that if someone tries to sell their work at a high price, that is the wrong way of doing it. — Yayoi Kusama

Pain - physical, emotional and spiritual pain - is more than just a condition that needs to be silenced, numbed or "fixed." Pain in all its forms is also a message, a kind of distress signal to our hearts and minds. There are times when it's really important to tune into that message and just listen to it. When we don't listen, our understanding of the world gets more and more distorted, and we become capable of doing things we very often regret. — Karyn Kusama

Forget yourself. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment. — Yayoi Kusama

Become one with eternity.
Become part of your environment.
Take off your clothes.
Forget yourself. Make love.
Self-destruction is the only
way to peace. — Yayoi Kusama

I think I will be able to, in the end, rise above the clouds and climb the stairs to Heaven, and I will look down on my beautiful life. — Yayoi Kusama

I'm half-Japanese, so I collect toys, like a Yayoi Kusama stuffed pumpkin. — Nicola Formichetti

I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland. — Yayoi Kusama

I want people to leave the theater wrestling with the idea that our pain - physical, emotional, and spiritual pain - is more than just a condition that needs to be silenced, numbed, or "fixed." — Karyn Kusama

There's no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It's experiencing the climb itself - in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue - that has to be the goal. — Karyn Kusama

If there's a cat, I obliterate it by putting polka dot stickers on it. I obliterate a horse by putting polka dot stickers on it. And I obliterated myself by putting the same polka dot stickers on myself. — Yayoi Kusama

I am putting every effort toward creating my works from morning till night on every single day. — Yayoi Kusama

In my home country, there was a little shop with old books, but it was really in the countryside. You couldn't find English books. I found this very avant-garde American art book that had information about Georgia O'Keeffe. I was very much impressed by her. — Yayoi Kusama

I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live. — Yayoi Kusama

Suppose I put polka dots all over my body and then cover my background completely with polka dots. The polka dots on my body, merging with those in the background, create an optically strange scene. — Yayoi Kusama

The reason I collaborate with Louis Vuitton is that Louis Vuitton is number one in the world, and I am honored to work with them. — Yayoi Kusama

When I was a child, I used to paint intently. The older I become, and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day. — Yayoi Kusama

The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration.' — Yayoi Kusama

I love Damien Hirst. I respect his work a great deal, and I am happy that the polka dots I started using have become a symbol of love and peace around the world with everybody joining hands to use them in this way. — Yayoi Kusama

I would like to try harder to establish my thought and philosophy strongly and to go back to the universe with my love. — Yayoi Kusama

I have been using polka dots since I was a very young child. Only after that, it seems, have they been used throughout the rest of the art world. — Yayoi Kusama

I hope royalty continues forever. This is the thing that can contribute to peace throughout the world. — Yayoi Kusama

You won't be reading reviews of the dystopian sci-fi flick Aeon Flux in the papers today because it wasn't screened for the press-and, given that it cost the GDP of a small country and that Charlize Theron and the director, Karyn Kusama, are critics' darlings, this could mean but one thing: A stinker. A weapon of mass destruction. A planet-killer. Folks, I'll never understand studios. Aeon Flux is not that terrible. — David Edelstein

Polka dots are fabulous. — Yayoi Kusama

I am honored and lucky to be one of the first films funded by Gamechanger Films, a consortium of investors who finance movies directed by women. — Karyn Kusama

I love painting so much that nothing else matters. — Yayoi Kusama

I am just another dot in the world — Yayoi Kusama

I have been taking every step toward the future every day through making many paintings and sculptures with my deep emotion hidden in my life. — Yayoi Kusama

I want to become more famous, even more famous. — Yayoi Kusama

I was in the U.S. about 15 years. Especially in New York. And then I came back to Japan. — Yayoi Kusama

My life is a dot lost among thousands of other dots. — Yayoi Kusama