Do we like Yayoi Kusama?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Real good (the anti-war protest, the 1968 gay wedding happening) sits beside decades of anti-Black writing she only apologised for in 2023.
Kusama was one of the most recognisable living artists on the planet, and she made her name in 1960s New York with happenings that were far more confronting than the polka-dot merch suggests. In 1968 her self-styled Church of Self-Obliteration was staging nude body-painting events and political stunts out of a Manhattan loft.
The stunt that tells you most about her: in 1968 she wrote an open letter urging Richard Nixon to end the Vietnam War, writing that you cannot eradicate violence with more violence. Same year, her group staged what its press release called the first homosexual wedding in the US, with a gown designed for the couple. It had no legal force and the first-ever claim is her own press release's, but it was a public act for gay couples long before that was safe.
The big stain is her writing. Her 2002 autobiography Infinity Net was reported to describe Black people in demeaning terms, with phrases like “animalistic sex techniques” and a “distinctive smell”. Vice News first reported it in 2017, and ArtReview notes similar language in her 1971 play Tokyo Lee. A line blaming Black residents for shootings in her old neighbourhood was reportedly dropped from the 2011 English translation.
In October 2023, the day after a San Francisco Chronicle column took SFMOMA to task, Kusama issued a statement just as its Infinite Love show opened. She said she “deeply regret[s] using hurtful and offensive language” in her book and apologised for the pain caused. Community members pressed the museum to do more than rhetoric, and critics noted the apology did not address her other works.
Her death in August brought it all back. Commentators online said Black people owed her no mourning, while in Japan some acknowledged the remarks but played them down, according to Unseen Japan. In Hawaii, the Honolulu Museum of Art is showing its first Kusama alongside the debate, with one professor saying you “can't remove the art from the artist”.
The harm test is a genuine close call. Anti-Black writing across several works is real harm, and an apology two decades on counts for something, but we can't say her acts changed after it because nothing on the record shows either way. Against that, no one reported her campaigning against any group in recent years, and no tabloid-free reporting turned up on how she treated staff or collaborators. That's honestly the whole list.