{"id":827533,"date":"2026-08-27T12:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T12:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/827533\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T12:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T12:04:09","slug":"trailblazing-artist-yayoi-kusama-princess-of-polka-dots-dies-at-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/827533\/","title":{"rendered":"Trailblazing artist Yayoi Kusama, \u2018princess of polka dots,\u2019 dies at 97"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For Yayoi Kusama, art was more than a calling \u2014 it was a reason to live.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it hadn\u2019t been for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,\u201d Kusama wrote in her essay \u201cWhy do I create art?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Known for her dizzying dot motifs, pumpkins and mirrored installations that offered a glimpse into the mind of someone who voluntarily lived in a psychiatric hospital for half of her life, Kusama created an extraordinary body of work over a career spanning more than seven decades that made her one of the world\u2019s most recognizable artists. She died Aug. 14 at a Tokyo hospital, according to a statement posted Thursday on her website. She was 97.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For Yayoi Kusama, art was more than a calling \u2014 it was a reason to live. \u201cIf it&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":827534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,13441,65205],"class_list":["post-827533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-obituary","tag-yayoi-kusama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}