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"If you must ask me when I started artistic creation, I can tell you that it was at a very, very young age. My life, every day of my life, is related to art. If people can have an afterlife, I want to be an artist again. Regardless of life or death, art is everything to me.

In an interview with Bund Pictorial, Yayoi Kusama repeatedly expressed the importance of art to her, and art was the only thing she grasped in her life.

In 1929, Yayoi Kusama was born into a wealthy family in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The family has been engaged in seed business for more than 1 years.

At the age of 1, Yayoi Kusama drew a pencil drawing. A little girl was gloomy and quiet without a smile, which is exactly a portrayal of her childhood.

My mother runs the family business brilliantly, but she knows nothing about her daughter's mental illness. In her opinion, Yayoi Kusama's so-called hallucinations are all nonsense, and painting is not something that a rich girl should do. She prefers her children to be "art collectors". Mother destroyed Yayoi Kusama's canvas, punished her to work with the workers, and often locked her up. "Beat me every day and kick me * * *", and the strong sense of terror made Yayoi Kusama's spirit close to collapse.

Although childhood memories are not wonderful, they greatly stimulate her creativity. Yayoi Kusama not only "invented" those flower-like plants, but also made them bigger and bigger. Flowers and plants have become the theme of Yayoi Kusama's creation, and a series of "Flowers in Full Bloom at Midnight" has been exhibited in LA, precisely because of her childhood memories.

In 1955, 26-year-old Yayoi Kusama found the works of American female painter Georgia O 'Keeffe in a second-hand bookstore. With the help of a cousin who knows English, she wrote to Qiao Zhiya Ou Jifu for help. "Although I am far away, although I have just started on the road of art, I still beg you to show me the way ..." The deeply moved female painter wrote back to Yayoi Kusama, expressing her willingness to recommend her works in the United States.

In 1957, Yayoi Kusama got a visa to the United States. Before leaving, her mother gave Yayoi Kusama 1 million yen and told her never to set foot in the house. When she left, she destroyed thousands of works on the riverbank outside her home to express her anger at her mother.

In the later novel "Foxglove in Central Park", Yayoi Kusama shows her early experience by describing the experience of a Japanese girl in new york: lonely and penniless, she still doesn't want to go back to Japan; She shuttled between galleries in the city with her own paintings; Because she doesn't know English, it is not normal and difficult for this small and unattractive oriental woman to sell a piece of work; In the rented apartment, she will wake up in the middle of the night and paint until dawn; Pick up fish heads and discarded rotten leaves in the garbage basket on the street and cook a bowl of hot soup with these materials.

"In the eyes of Americans, Japanese women are like flowers in a greenhouse. Yayoi Kusama broke this view. She is strong and creative. "new york critic Gordon Brown said this in an interview in the 196s.

The appearance of American artist Joseph Curnell adds romance to Yayoi Kusama's life. Curnell is a famous American artist, sculptor and pioneer of experimental film in modern times. "The first time I saw him, he was wearing a strange coat. I was frightened and thought I saw a ghost.

He wrote to me every day, called me countless times and called me on the phone, so that someone asked me if the phone was broken. I said, no, because he has been talking to me. Yayoi Kusama later remembered that one day, Curnell wrote 14 letters to her. Since they met in 196s, they have been together until Joseph Curnell died in 1972.

The death of her lover dealt a heavy blow to Yayoi Kusama, and her mental problems became more and more serious. In 1973, the year after Joseph Curnell's death, Yayoi Kusama returned to Tokyo from new york, left artists and critics, escaped from the media and lived alone in a mental sanatorium.