Yayoi Kusama's work has a direct and immediate visual impact. Her obsessions with dots, pumpkins and floppy phalluses have become big crowd pleasers after a spotty career of avant-garde agitation and mental-health issues. The auction house Christie's says she is "now the highest-selling living female artist." Her solo show, "My Eternal Soul," is part of The National Art Center, Tokyo's celebration of its 10th anniversary, so expect queues and crowds for this frenetic extravaganza of color and confessional declarations.
The popular appeal of Kusama's work is that her later stuff is pretty; the main hall of the exhibition is filled with the series "My Eternal Soul" — more than 100 bold, bright acrylic paintings, hung edge to edge, all painted in the last eight years. The works have titles such as "Entrance to Rise to Heaven" and "It's Me Who is Crying Out." Three glossy, tumescent and fecund flower sculptures in the middle of the room tell us that we are now in the province of Kusama's subliminally erotic, but militantly asexual, universe.
Selfies are encouraged, but the room is patrolled by uniformed guards and staff dressed like secret service agents, who enforce a no proper camera, smart phone-only policy. It's an interesting coda to the story of the uninvited Kusama trying to sell her merchandise at the 1966 Venice Biennale before the organizers shut her down, and to her mistrust of the Japanese media, who she has accused of using photos without permission.