‘I fight pain and fear with art’: how Yayoi Kusama blazed a trail for neurodivergent artists

An enduring influence … Yayoi Kusama as a young woman.

‘I fight pain and fear with art’: how Yayoi Kusama blazed a trail for neurodivergent artists

The pioneering Japanese artist talked openly about how her mental health and neurodivergence informed her creativity, paving the way for the likes of Turner prize winner Nnena Kalu

BIOGRAPHY

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Thrusday 27 August 2026

Yayoi Kusama – who has died at the age of 97 – was 10 when she first started experiencing vivid hallucinations consisting of visual and aural disturbances, which she described as “flashes of light, auras, or dense fields of dots”. A drawing from 1939, of a woman in a kimono assumed to be her mother, shows her obliterated by those dots; they would become Kusama’s artistic obsession. She hallucinated flowers, too. “I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe”, she once said, when asked about that recurring motif. “I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness.”

Yayoi Kusama’s psychedelic art was at its best when taken in high doses

 

Yayoi Kusama’s psychedelic art was at its best when taken in high doses

With dots that dizzied the viewer, the giddy sensory overload of seeing the grandest installations of her octopuses and giant pumpkins was hard to resist

BIOGRAPHY

Jonathan Jones
Thrusday 27 August 2026

Ionce had an argument about Yayoi Kusama with Peter Gabriel. Not in person – I’ve never met the prog rock hero. But after I recorded some critical comments on her work for the BBC, I watched the segment only to see Gabriel passionately defending her. My onscreen cynicism seemed harsh indeed compared with his soulful appreciation of all those dots.

My scepticism about Kusama started the first time I saw her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The context is significant because after a big dose of Jackson Pollock’s looping, tangled forests of colour and line (colour as line), Piet Mondrian’s pulsing Broadway Boogie Woogie and other great abstract art, Kusama’s dots appeared to me static, planned, predictable. I wasn’t excited or moved.

Obituaries / Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama creating a work from her My Eternal Soul series displayed in Cologne, Germany, 2026. Photograph: Sonja Blom/Alamy

Yayoi Kusama obituary

Artist known for her dazzling polka-dotted paintings and infinity mirror room installations

BIOGRAPHY

Christopher Masters
Thursday 27 August 2026

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who has died aged 97, created an exhilarating oeuvre of polka-dotted paintings, stuffed cloth phalloi and provocative happenings, films and installations, as well as a curate’s egg of novels and poetry. Kusama’s autobiography, Infinity Net (2002), relates her work directly to the obsessions and neuroses from which she suffered throughout her life: “From my very earliest memories, I have felt imprisoned by the walls of my eyes and ears and heart, upon which have been emblazoned all manner of things – nature, the universe, people and blood and flowers…. The only way for me to elude these furtive appearances is to recreate them visually with paint, pen or pencil in an attempt to decipher what they are.”

 

Tanya Gomelskaya uses rich colors and bold contrasts to enhance the visual drama of her art

A brush with emotion: the art of Tanya Gomelskaya

An artist who turns emotion into three-dimensional beauty

Orsolya Antoni

12 September 2025

In this dreamlike and hectic world, so overwhelmed by the incessant rhythm of the internet and the compulsive fascination of social media, we are ubiquitously exposed to an entire collection of bad influences that seep into our existence. However, in the midst of the chaos of this world, I stumbled upon an oasis of positive energy while scrolling randomly through Instagram. There, I discovered a great artist, Tanya Gomelskaya, whose artistic vision transcends all the traditional boundaries with her mesmerizing three-dimensional paintings. Not only is her art perception-stimulating, but it also transports viewers to a realm of a kaleidoscope of creativity and inspiration. I was attracted to her work immediately and have been a fan ever since.

Gallery employees pose with Love is in the Bin by Banksy, photo by Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Banksy's 'Love is in the Bin': art vs. commercialization

Exploring the impact and meaning behind Banksy's most controversial artwork

Orsolya Antoni
12 January 2025

Banksy is my favourite street artist because of his unique way of addressing everyday life and conflicts. When I was working for a very well-known auction house, I had the opportunity to see some of his work, especially 'Girl with Balloon,' which was shredded at the auction and renamed to 'Love is in the Bin.' This incident, where the artwork self-destructed after being sold, was a bold and intriguing statement by Banksy. It was a direct challenge to the commercialization of art, a practice that often places more value on the price tag than the artistic message and the value we place on it. This incident not only made headlines but also sparked a global conversation about the true value of art and the role of the art market in determining it. The shredded 'Girl with Balloon' became a new piece of art, 'Love is in the Bin,' which further emphasized Banksy's critique of the art market's focus on monetary value over artistic expression.

Mayuko Okada

 

Mayuko Okada

I started to be attracted to kimonos from a young age, influenced by my grandmother, who was a shopping queen as well as a kimono lover. I majored in Japanese painting at university with a dream of kimono related art.

Where have all the warriors gone?

 

A statue of a man riding a horse, depicting a samurai in traditional Japanese armor

Where have all the warriors gone? 

A reflection on men, style, and identity crisis

Virginie Tolly
2 September 2025

More than ever, men seem to have lost their connection with style. That quiet but powerful language that once said everything before a man ever spoke.

Photographer Torbjørn Rødland is Returning to His Perverted Roots

Another Bricolage, 2024-2026. Chromogenic print. 7 7/8 x 12 inches. Courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

Photographer Torbjørn Rødland is Returning to His Perverted Roots

Lily McMenamy

March 17, 2026

For three decades Norwegian artist Torbjørn Rødland has constructed images that at first glance seem controlled: glossy skin, wholesome setups, meticulous lighting. But if you stick with them, reality starts to crack, and an unsettling, uncanny presence emerges. His latest show, Bones in the Canal and Other Photographs, which opened last week at David Kordansky, marks a return to the calculated perversions he’s spent years perfecting, only this time with a much smaller camera, and a different view. As he told his friend and collaborator Lily McMenamy (who also appears in the exhibition), over Zoom, it’s all about composition, Enneagram types, and his inexhaustible inner world. 

Tony Bechara / An artist of many worlds

Tony Bechara, Untitled (detail), 1969. Courtesy of Parrish Art Museum

Tony Bechara: an artist of many worlds

27 Jun — 1 Nov 2026 at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, United States

30 JUNE 2026

 

My work is about the experience of vision, prior to the interpretation of a specific image—I am interested in that early reaction to light as it becomes cognitive. Painting is a vehicle of light and vision first, and then symbolic and narrative.

(Tony Bechara, 2001)

Shintaro Miyake, 記憶 Memories (detail), 2026. Courtesy of Tomio Koyama Gallery

May it still be a beautiful life

27 Jun — 1 Aug 2026 at the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo, Japan

22 JUNE 2026 

Every time I see or hear about the many things happening in the world, I find myself thinking more and more that we’ve reached the end of days. This is hardly anything new, as there has always been something or another, ever since I was a child. I don’t remember when I first learned the phrase Yo-mo-sue (the end of days)1, but lately, as I’ve gained the impression that we’ve already reached it, day after day, I cannot help but feel as if there’s actually an even further end beyond that.

 

Banksy

Kissing coppers to rutting rhinos: Banksy’s artworks – ranked!

The quality of the enigmatic street artist’s murals veers wildly: from self-satisfied satirical statements to truly funny political provocations. Our critic rates his pieces, from worst to best

Jonathan Jones

Wednesdayt 14 August 2024

One of Banksy’s best-known but emptiest artworks, this mural that first appeared on London’s South Bank in 2002 is the 21st century answer to John Everett Millais’ gooey Victorian painting Bubbles, which was used as an advert for Pear’s Soap. The heart-shaped balloon floats away. The little girl is sad.

‘His last kiss to the world’ / David Hockney’s return to Yorkshire triggered a glorious reawakening

David Hockney. My Parents, 1977. Tate Gallery

‘His last kiss to the world’: David Hockney’s return to Yorkshire triggered a glorious reawakening

When the artist came home from LA, it seemed like a retirement. But it heralded an astonishing new chapter. Our critic remembers their thrilling dinners together – and the dazzling new works that arrived in his inbox every morning

Jonathan Jones

Monday 15 June 2026


I

t was springtime in Paris and I was floating among young green leaves and white blossom – but I was not in a park. I was on an upper floor of the Fondation Louis Vuitton delighting, wallowing in several of David Hockney’s iPad paintings of his garden in Normandy. In one room, this green oasis was shown by the light of the silvery moon: the darkened chamber was alive with shining white lunar discs, blue clouds and the shadowy fingers of tree branches.

‘He found the right style to show gay life as it is’ … David Hockney, 1966, by Jane Bown. Photograph: Jane Bown/From Observer Picture Library

‘David Hockney changed the world just by looking at it’: a tribute to the artist whose work was a feast of visual pleasures

He was subversive and bold, yet also playful and accepting – putting the fun into pop art and finding freedom and fulfilment amid the blue skies and pools of California. David Hockney, who has died aged 88, lived and painted the truth

Jonathan Jones
Friday 12 June 2026

David Hockney’s art was a feast of unabashed visual pleasure, one long orgy of the gaze, the delighted lifelong epiphany of someone who cherished flowers in a vase and freeways in the sun and thought endlessly about new ways of making pictures of such passing treasures. He changed the world just by looking at it. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the way he saw was revolutionary – all he cared about was truth. But no one had ever captured the look and feel of the contemporary world with such acceptance before. He has the same simple perfection as the Beatles – just as they caught the sound of the modern world, he caught its look.

He outlived four of his doctors’ / What was behind David Hockney’s lifelong love of smoking?

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British painter David Hockney poses at the Pompidou Centre in Paris on September 26, 2017 in front of one of his painting, a work made of an assemblage of various paintings, that he donated to the museum. Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN 

He outlived four of his doctors’: what was behind David Hockney’s lifelong love of smoking?

His passion got him into scraps with the Paris Metro and numerous other bodies. Was it a social crutch? A Freudian response to his father? And why did he take such delight in writing to the Guardian about it all?

Zoe Williams

Saturday 13 June 2026

David Hockney’s last self-portrait that went on show while he lived, in 2025’s Paris retrospective, has a Droste effect: the figure holds a picture in which the figure holds a picture. Between the fingers of one hand, a paintbrush; of the other, a cigarette. He could have been smoking and smoking and smoking into infinity. That’s the elemental truth of the work, and even while that turned out not to be literally true – he died this week, aged 88 – he gave it his best shot.

Geoffrey Reeve/Bridgeman Art Library

Hockney at work at the Royal College of Art in 

This article is more than 9 years old

David Hockney: I wasn't keen on Hillary when she banned smoking in the White House

In an exclusive interview the artist treads carefully – for most of the time – around US politics but is firm in his favour for painting. ‘If those were photographs in there, it would be a lot less interesting,’ he tells Gay Alcorn

Gay Alcorn

Fridady 11 November 2016

David Hockney laughs, and pauses to think. It is one day after Donald Trump was elected the next president of the United States, and the world has shifted a little on its axis.