Japan is the only country on earth to still be ruled by emperors. Their rule began some 1500 years ago. They fought bitter wars of expansion, made Japan the first industrial nation in Asia and entered into World War II. The political importance of the Japanese monarchy waned in later years. Democracy found its way into one of the most populous countries in the world during the occupation of the United States. However, even today, emperorship and an orientation towards strict traditions retain cultural significance.

Kusama writes this sentence in Japan in 1955 to the US-American artist Georgia O’Keeffe (b. 1887; d. 1986). Shortly beforehand, Kusama finds one of O’Keeffe’s illustrated monographs in a bookstore by chance. Kusama’s letter reaches the reclusive grande dame of painting in New Mexico. Kusama also includes some of her watercolours. O’Keeffe gives an encouraging response, and they begin corresponding, prompting Kusama to realise her dream of moving to the United States from Japan: “I have been very interested in the art of your country and sometimes think of going there but it is very far away.”

I, you, he, she, it – the development of one’s own personality amidst the tension between family and society was examined by the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud in the 1920s, marking the foundation of psychoanalysis. With this method, which is still practiced today, he primarily explored the realm of the subconscious. Torn between primal instincts and social requirements, the human self often forms pathologically. Individual neuroses and psychoses – states that have accompanied Kusama since childhood – develop primarily in the “mirror stage” of early childhood experiences, as was shown by later psychoanalysts (Jacques Lacan). In the form of collective trauma, however, they may also refer to conflicts within society as a whole.

No art is created in a vacuum – or is it? From the 1950s onwards, space symbolises limitless possibilities. The journey to the stars becomes reality on 4 October 1957 with the launch of the Sputnik I satellite by the Soviet Union. Only a few hundred kilometres east of Russia and in the same year, Yayoi Kusama emigrates from Japan to the United States. The Cold War rages between the United States and the USSR. Man’s first trip to the moon by a US-American is celebrated both within politics and by the media as a victory for technology and progress. Even if Kusama’s longing for the infinite expanse of space is of a more spiritual nature, one can understand her art in connection with the social influences of that era.

An important ally for Kusama in Europe is the Argentine-Italian artist Lucio Fontana, famous for his so-called cut pictures and sculptures with the series title Concetto spaziale (spatial concept). In the group exhibition Monochrome Painting (1960 in Leverkusen) their works are shown together for the first time. Udo Kultermann, the German curator who is decisive in Kusama’s connection to Germany, organises the show. In the spring of 1965, these work trips also take Kusama to Milan, where she lives in Fontana’s studio and prepares her work for the Venice Biennial with Fontana’s support.

The German curator who has a major influence on Kusama’s presence in Europe was Udo Kultermann (b. 1927; d. 2013). He completes his studies in art history with a doctoral thesis on the Italian Baroque sculpture. A little later, in his first museum position in Bremen, he deals with utopian architecture and discovers an unknown diary by the Russian avant-garde artist Kasimir Malevich (b. 1879; d. 1935). However, US-American art is also close to his heart. While still in Bremen, in the Amerikahaus, he organises lectures on the "Action Painter" Jackson Pollock (b. 1912; d. 1956), for example.

As director of the Städtisches Museum Schloss Morsbroich in Leverkusen, Germany, in the early-1960s, he formulates new kinds of interdisciplinary events, including a three-day festival with dance, music, film, theatre, graphics and painting, aimed at all citizens of the city. Kultermann spends the end of the decade and the rest of his life in the United States as a professor of art history and architectural theory. In addition to his ground-breaking research on contemporary architecture in Africa and the Middle East, Udo Kultermann was one of the first art historians not only to observe but also to actively promote contemporary female performance art – first and foremost, that of Yayoi Kusama.

The word “hip” describes what is fashionable. In the 1960s, countless young people all around the world assumed the status of being hippies. They celebrated Kusama as a kind of “queen bee”, in whose busy art-making it was easy to discover the convictions of the movement: a rejection of the consumer-oriented lifestyle and other social mores of the growing middle class replaced with a new love for nature. “Make love, not war”, was based on the ideals of generosity and togetherness and included socio-political demands such as the end of the Vietnam War, the sexual revolution and the anti-racist movement for racial equality.

A master in her own country – 80 years of her life before Kusama was officially honoured by Japan for her contributions. In 2016 she receives “Bunka Kunsho”, the highest cultural order, which was awarded by none other than the emperor himself.