There's been controversy over Yayoi Kusama's recent passing (2026) - while many are mourning the loss of a great luminary in the art world, others are saying "good riddance", citing her past remarks about racial issues - particularly of people of color.
Her defenders say that it was an unfortunate part of her generation's upbringing (the homogenous population in Japan often tends to have skewed perspectives on racial issues) and cite her mental health as a reason for her "inappropriate" remarks. Besides, she issued an apology in 2023 and those comments were from over 20 years ago - isn't that enough?
Her critics say no, that's not enough - especially since the apology was done in context of a big show coming up - seeing the apology as more opportunistic rather than genuine. And even more disdain for the institutional apparatus that tried to downplay it or cover it up. And so, the controversy rages on, words traded on both sides.
Of course, none of this would matter if a significant number of people didn't think her work was good. But "good"...what does that really mean? For both the artwork and the artist as a human being?
In past eras, where religion and artistic practice were more closely intertwined, morality and aesthetics were often considered one in the same. Perhaps most famously, the six-step interval you find on the piano was called the "devil's interval", implying that the dissonant sounds that it produced not only sounded bad, but was bad for your soul as well.
Part of modernism's goal was to do away with this concept entirely, creating a clear separation between artist and artwork. There have been many forms of this idea emerge throughout history - "art for art's sake", "transcendental idealism", "gesamtkunstwerk", "the sublime" - but they all serve the same purpose of disconnecting the artist from the responsibility of their own (self-)expression. The art industry tries to glamorize this process as an noble ideal, but the reality is that a lot of these decisions are made because of money. (Disconnecting artists' control over their own works is how profits are made, after all.)
This disconnect became a practical necessity for people who championed composers like Richard Wagner, who the Nazis in their prime idolized as the "ideal" musician. As his personal misgivings started to make him look more unfavorable to modern sensibilities, their argument was that it was sometimes necessary to "separate" the artist from their works, because their art was actually better than who they actually were as people.
For the most part, this argument worked, and that is the world we live in today. It would probably be redundant to point out how many of these types of folks are running the world right now - justified by the idea that "well, they are horrible people, be at least they're getting the job done". But even that has now been called into question, since the "job done" parts have been severely lacking as well.
Personally, I've always felt that the separating the artist from the artworks was basically impossible - but that there's a side to human nature that actually enjoys the unsavory parts of meaning lurking within. (Similar to how violence is an accepted thing in entertainment, even while we think of ourselves as "civilized".) Wagner's music - which are overly grandiose in scale, overstays its welcome in terms of length, and perpetually self-obsessed - isn't exactly hard to connect to Nazism if you just look at what it really is. We just don't talk about art in this way anymore because aesthetic literacy is mostly a lost skill that isn't taught anymore - not properly, anyway.
Yayoi Kusama's works can be looked at this way, particularly in her "mirrored" works that allowed her to make a name for herself - it's a self-reflecting chamber of infinite introspection, and the beauty hidden within. On one hand, it is an exceptional example of the combination of fantastical thinking with modern styles, which is what draws her fans into her world. On the other hand, you could also argue that Kusama's works are inherently escapist - which would explain a lot about her comments made in the past. How could she think it was a good idea to say those things in public during the height of her career? Well, if she didn't actually know where she was (especially given her issues with mental health), that could seem plausible.
While I did enjoy some of Kusama's works on a personal level, there was always a sadness to her output that prevented me from becoming a true fan. A lot of her works faces inwards, not outwards, and in a lot of ways is an expression of the aesthetic prison that she had built for herself. It's a golden prison - a beautiful prison - but a prison nonetheless, which isn't too far off from how she used to live her life, day to day. For an entrepreneur type like me that values my freedom, that's something I can only admire from afar - the awareness of the world can only go so far if you never leave your home, after all.
There is also a reason why someone like her - who literally spent most of her life in a psychiatric ward - rose to popularity. We are living in a world that is becoming increasingly irrational and unhinged - and perhaps there's a side to all of us that just wants to give into the insanity and check ourselves in, too.
So back to the question. Was Yayoi Kusama a good artist? It largely depends on your definition of what "good" actually means. In art, its within those definitions where a work's real meaning starts to emerge.