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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I will keep painting until I die.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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