Ashley Innes
Asian Art Specialist
Few artists have achieved the level of global fame attained by Yayoi Kusama (1929–2026), the pioneering Contemporary Japanese artist who passed away on 14 August at age 97. Best known for her polka dots, pumpkins, infinity nets, and art installations, Kusama was a larger-than-life figure and household name, celebrated equally in the art market and in popular culture. At the time of her passing, she was considered among the world’s most famous living artists. After Hokusai, she is arguably the most famous Japanese artist in history.
Born and raised in Matsumoto, Japan, Kusama began creating art from childhood, inspired by the pumpkins growing in the fields on her family’s farm. Much of the art she is best known for today, including her Infinity Room installations and polka dot motifs, stemmed from hallucinations she began experiencing in her youth. Throughout her life, she was outspoken about her struggles with mental health and their relationship with her artistic process, as she spent the second half of her life voluntarily living in a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo, continuing to produce art outside of the facility. For example, several of her highest-selling works at auction are her paintings from her various early Nets series in the 1950s and 1960s, which captured the “self-obliteration” she experienced in her hallucinations.
Her highest performing work to date is an oil on canvas painting Untitled (Nets) (1959) sold at Phillips NY for $10.5 million (8.47 million GBP). Many of her most expensive works today are from the early decades of her career.
Kusama’s childhood and early adulthood in Japan shaped her career, which began to flourish upon moving to the US at age 27.
Decades before the mass commercialization of her art, she actively participated in American counterculture while living in New York, as an early creator of feminist art and a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. In the early stages of her career, she was best known for her performance art, installation art, and writing. While these were all central to her career, the focus of this article will be tangible personal property, which is the most popular market for collectors of Kusama’s art.
Kusama’s oeuvre is prolific, spanning seven decades and multiple forms of Contemporary art. Although she was a professional artist for decades prior, she reentered public consciousness in the 1990s and her auction market exploded in the 2010s, with the mass commercialization of her artworks and frequent collaborations with luxury brands, which continued for the last two decades of her life. Since 2011 alone, she has had well over 10,000 lots offered at auction and $1.4 billion (1.03 billion GBP) of auction turnover. This figure omits gallery sales, which are difficult to quantify, but are also tremendous. Her peak years of auction market activity were 2021-2024, with continued strength in 2025-2026. It is very well possible that 2027 may also challenge the records of her peak years, depending on the level of market saturation. Of her top-selling lots, the most popular media are oil or acrylic paintings and pumpkin sculptures, capturing her iconic motifs of pumpkins, polka dots, and/or infinity nets. A characteristic example is a 2015 acrylic self-portrait, which includes all three motifs and sold at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2024 for 41.6 million HKD (4.15 million GBP).
In recent years, Kusama was also famous for her collaborations with designer brands. While her work in fashion dates to the 1960s in New York, her 2010s-2020s collaborations further catapulted her to celebrity status. For example, here in London in 2023, one couldn’t miss the monumental figure of her outside of Harrods, advertising her collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Similar temporary statues and animatronic installations stood in Paris, Tokyo and New York. These ventures have shown success at retail as well as on the secondary auction market. In 2024, one of Kusama’s Louis Vuitton pumpkin bags broke the auction record for any Louis Vuitton bag, selling for $151,200 (115,000 GBP), far exceeding the preauction estimate of $10,000 – $15,000 at Christie’s New York. Another bag from the same edition will be offered at Christie’s online handbag sale in September 2026, so it will be interesting to see whether the success of the first sale is repeated (the modest preauction estimate was repeated for this auction listing, but preauction estimates are not accurate indicators of fair market value).
Despite Kusama’s celebrity status, eye-watering prices of her top-selling auction lots, and designer-brand collaborations, her work is remarkably accessible to entry-level collectors. In 2025, her median auction price was $6,918.10 (5,250.70 GBP), and some of her objects from larger editions and collaborations are available for under 1,000 GBP. Many items within the lower price bracket are smaller pumpkin sculptures and ceramics, such as a ceramic pumpkin (2002) sold at Tozai New Art Auction for ¥1,200,000 JPY (5,575 GBP) in 2026.
Kusama’s artistic messages appeal to global audiences. The vulnerability with which she conveyed her mental health struggles, the importance of her historical impact in second-wave feminist art and American counterculture, and above all, the simple but meaningful recognizability and relatability of her polka dots have cemented her as one of the defining artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. For ardent collectors, fashionistas, and first-time exhibition attendees alike, there will be something to celebrate in Kusama’s work long after her passing.
