Yayoi Kusama
ARTIST (1929 - present)
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese contemporary
artist who works primarily in sculpture and
installation. Her work is based in conceptual
art with some attributes of feminism,
minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut and more.
She has been acknowledged as one of the
most important living artists to come out of
Japan. In October 2006, Kusama became the
first Japanese woman to receive the
Praemium Imperiale, one of Japan's highest
honours for internationally recognized artists.
As of 2012, her work has the highest
financial turnover of any living woman artist.
Bedatri D. Choudhury has described how
Kusama's lack of feeling in control throughout
her life made her, either consciously or
subconsciously, want to control how others
perceive time and space when entering her
exhibits.
Yoko Ono
ARTIST (1933 - present)
Yoko Ono, although she is well known as
John Lenon's wife and artistic partner. She
was however one of the first women to join
the philosophy program at Gakushūin
University, Tokyo in 1952. Ono's artistic
performances Imaginative encouraged and
often required interactive participation from
audience, with her artistic practice becoming
associated with the Fluxus collective. Many of
her performance works mainly had written
instructions to carry out, a series of these
were later published into the book Grapefruit
in 1964. Her performance Cut Piece (1964),
later became recognised as a landmark for
feminist art, with its connotations towards the
subject of sexual violence.
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