Infinity Mirrors

     “One day, after gazing at a pattern of red flowers on the tablecloth, I looked up to see that the ceiling, the windows, and the columns seemed to be plastered with the same red floral pattern. I saw the entire room, my entire body, and the entire universe covered with red flowers, and in that instant my soul was obliterated and I was restored, returned to infinity, to eternal time and absolute space.” –Yayoi Kusama 
     Born in 1929, Yayoi Kusama grew up near her family’s plant nursery in Matsumoto, Japan. At nineteen, following World War II, she moved to Kyoto to study a traditional Japanese style of painting that is made on washi paper or silk. At that time she began experimenting with abstraction. 
     After arriving in the United States in 1957 that she began the phase that would characterize her work. While living in New York between 1958 and 1973, Kusama worked closely with important artists of the 1960s art world while refining her signature art. In her 1965 Infinity Mirror Room (Phalli’s Field) she first used mirrors. 
     She returned to Japan in 1973 and has continued to develop mirrored art. Today, she maintains an active studio in Tokyo and is widely regarded as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.