Dreams do not feed you. And in the case of Yayoi Kusama, life-long hallucinations can almost destroy you. In 1973, 16 years after diving into the American arts scene, the famed Japanese artist had had enough of New York City. She was broke, tired and burnt out by the politics of avant-garde hobnobbing. Shunned by her contemporaries, the polka dot queen packed her bags and returned to her homeland of Japan with a fragile but, nonetheless, intact ego. Considering the plethora of dismissive critics, copycats and rejections of her past life, Kusama’s nonchalant reaction to the Whitney Museum’s recent celebration of her 60-year career comes as no surprise. She feels vindicated, not flattered. “What I’ve been doing was historically right,” the 83-year-old told New York Magazine in regards to the exhibition, which also featured in London’s Tate Modern. READ MORE