20 Things You Didn't Know About Yayoi Kusama

The Japanese artist turns 85 today. Celebrate by getting to know her better.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Today Japanese artist and polka dot queen Yayoi Kusama turns 85. Over the past 60 years of creating work, the artist has skyrocketed to fame, showing works in international art fairs, museums, and galleries. Last Novemeber, she opened a blockbuster show of paintings and installations at David Zwirner gallery called "I Who Have Arrived in Heaven" that had lines around around the block to get into her two Infinity Rooms. 

The mythology that has accompanied Kusama's ascent to fame and recognition is peppered with both trauma and triumph. From her abusive mother to her (almost unknown) lovers, Kusama's life continues to unfold even now. Celebrate the colorful artist's birthday with 20 Things You Didn't Know About Yayoi Kusama.

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RELATED: Watch Yayoi Kusama Talk About Her New Exhibition "I Who Have Arrived in Heaven"

She didn't start with polka dots.

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But once she started painting polka dots, they had a dark meaning.

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At age 27, she wrote a letter to the president of France.

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She was also pen pals with Georgia O'Keeffe.

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And during the Vietnam War, she wrote to Richard Nixon.

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When she finally moved to the US, Kusama travelled with unusual baggage.

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But she didn't come to New York first.

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Once in New York, she staged various "happenings" in the city.

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She created a naked painting studio/gay club.

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And she carried out a Homosexual Marriage long before gay marriage was legal in New York City.

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Besides paintings and performance pieces, Kusama is also a filmmaker.

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She's also an author.

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She has also worked as a designer.

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Her avant-garde fashions have been sold at Bloomingdales.

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Kusama, Donald Judd, and Eva Hesse were making art in the same building.

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Donald Judd and Frank Stella loved her work.

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Kusama's longest intimate relationship was with artist Joseph Cornell.

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She's the only person to ever be revered for an "artful pumpkin patch."

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Gagosian Gallery writes the following in Kusama's bio on their website:

The success of her project for the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993—a dazzling mirror room filled with pumpkin sculptures, like an artful pumpkin patch over which she presided in magician's garb—Kusama went on to produce a huge, vivid yellow pumpkin covered with an optical pattern of black spots as an outdoor sculpture. The pumpkin, like the infinity net, became a kind of alter ego for her.

Her work has sold for $5.7 million.

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She has been making artwork longer than you've been alive.

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