Mirror Room (Pumpkin)—Yayoi Kusama’s Psychological Space

Yayoi kusama uses aspects of her mental illness in her creation of Mirror Room (Pumpkin) to welcome participants to experience her psychological space.


Introduction
Yayoi Kusama is a well-known pop artist, surrealist, feminist and minimalist.
Her works, including paintings, sculptures, performances, Installations, novels, films, etc., presents the motifs of Kusama's art works, polka dots, infinity nets, phallic soft sculptures and pumpkins (Chiba, 2006). In my dissertation, I'll set a question about her art work, Mirror Room (Pumpkin) 1991, reflective chamber on a series of yellow gourds covered in black polka dots, one of Kusama's frequently used symbols (Gilman, 1892). Visitors will peep a mirrored space and fully immerse themselves in Kusama's creation, becoming part of the art. I concentrated on a question in my research, what's the meaning of this art piece, and try to find clues from Kusama's career (Hoptmann, 2003).
In 1991, Kusama exhibited Mirror Room (Pumpkin) (Figure 1) (Kusama, 1978). Through that window the viewer could gaze on what seemed to be an infinite field of papier mâché pumpkins, the same yellow and black polka dot design as the exterior gallery (Piling, 2012). In this pumpkin work, Kusama nearly shows all her iconic traits: yellow color with black dots, pumpkins, and an infinity made by the mirror.
Kusama has traced the origins of these motifs back to hallucinations that first struck when she was ten years old. Dr. Nishimura, a psychiatric physician, diagnosed as "atypical psychosis", which resulted in schizophrenia and irritability (Kusama, 2002). Kusama's mental disease comes from her "Childhood trauma".
An upper-middle-class family of seedling merchants, it seemed that little Kusama had a good family. However, Kusama's father was a playboy, continually have sexual relationship with whores, geishas, even housemaids one after another.
Kusama's mother was the proud daughter of the head of the family and owner of bad temper (Kusama, 2011). She became hysterical when her husband left for trysts, and forced young Kusama to follow him and report back. after Kusama's reports, her mother would vent all her rage on little Kusama, and would send her again next time. That may be the reason why Kusama kept a platonic relationship for ten years with her lover, Joseph Cornell, a famous American contemporary artist. It is said that they don't have sex in their relationship. Thus, I get the first clue; Kusama had tremendous fear of sex.
In this awful family atmosphere, the only thing that kept her in peace was Q. Guo DOI: 10.4236/adr.2019.71003 24 Art and Design Review drawing. However, her mother had a strong opposition to Kusama's art pursuits (Takako, 2008). In conservative Japanese families, girls who pursue art are considered shameful. Kusama's mother wanted Kusama to be like a art dealer rather than artist. She always kicked Kusama's palettes, ripped up her works and threw them away. The earliest recorded work, the image of her mother in a kimono ( Figure 2), is covered and obliterated by dots, looks sad and depressing (Yayoi, 2016). It is not like a portrait of a mother, but an expression of hate and anger.

Conclusion
Happenings   Back to the Mirror Room (Pumpkin) (1991), now all the elements have a logical explanation. Due to the presence of mirror cube in the center, the hall seems to become an infinite space, filled with infinite yellow black dots. It's like countless cells and lives in it, and the cube disappears, assimilated into the universe, like Kusama herself. Meanwhile, inside the mirror cube, is Kusama's inner world, is also an infinite world, filled with pumpkins, filled with her desire to recover from the fear of sex. It's a concentrated reflection of Kusama's psychological space (Figure 6).    her infinite pain, she takes this pain to create art, and pursue art for her entire life. It could be said, Yayoi Kusama creates art, and art saved her.

Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this paper.