When I was a child, I used to paint intently. The older I become, and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day.
Interpretation
As we grow older and confront mortality, we may find deeper appreciation and vibrancy in life.
In this quote, Yayoi Kusama reflects on her childhood passion for painting and how, with age and the awareness of mortality, her life becomes richer and more vivid. It suggests that the inevitability of death brings a newfound clarity and intensity to the experience of living, encouraging individuals to embrace life's brightness despite its fleeting nature.
In practice
This quote can be shared during an art exhibit to inspire appreciation for creativity at all ages.
A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can't stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement... Polka-dots are a way to infinity.
The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration.'
It doesn't matter at all for me that I work in hospital or anywhere with limited space. Every day, I'm creating new works with all my might.
You should create a work that is so valuable it might eventually sell at a high price, but you've got to concentrate on how you create that artwork.
There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service; your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead.
This is the very coinage of your brain: this bodiless creation ecstasy.
It's work to play the same songs the same way for 70 shows.
Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.
To me, beauty is inclusion - every size, every color - that's the world I live in.
What art was to the ancient world, Science is to the modern; the distinctive faculty. In the minds of men, the useful has succeeded to the beautiful.
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