'Yayoi Kusama is one of the most significant contemporary artists at work today. This engaging memoir reveals her to be a fascinating, maverick figure, channelling her obsessive neuroses into an art that transcends cultural barriers.

The decade Kusama spent in New York saw her status change from poverty-stricken artist living in a freezing loft and existing on scraps of food, to doyenne of the counter-cultural art scene. She tells the story of her relationships with key art-world figures, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Donald Judd, Andy Warhol and the reclusive Joseph Cornell, with whom she forged a close bond. In candid terms she describes her childhood and the first appearance of the obsessive visions that have haunted her throughout her life. Returning to Japan and to relative obscurity in the early 1970s, Kusama admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo. It is from this base that she has emerged to add to the seemingly endless stream of artworks and writings that in the past decade have won her international acclaim and seen her the subject of many major exhibitions across the world.

This remarkable autobiography, translated by Ralph McCarthy, provides a powerful insight into the mind of a unique artist, haunted by fears and phobias yet determined to maintain her position at the forefront of the artistic avant-garde.' - from the back cover