When infinity becomes finite: How will Yayoi Kusama’s death influence the art market?
A large inflatable mannequin depicts artist Yayoi Kusama over Louis Vuitton’s flagship store in Paris in 2023. The collaboration reflects the extraordinary reach Kusama achieved during her lifetime, as her art moved from galleries and museums into global popular culture. | REUTERS
Sep 26, 2026
In 1966, Yayoi Kusama appeared at the Venice Biennale with 1,500 mirrored plastic spheres and spread them across the lawn outside the Italian Pavilion.
She had not been formally invited to exhibit.
The work was “Narcissus Garden,” and Kusama began offering individual spheres to visitors for 1,200 lire, about $2 at the time, until Biennale officials stopped the sales. The gesture turned repetition into spectacle and spectacle into commerce. An apparently endless field of identical objects could, one by one, be bought and carried away.
In a time of both misinformation and too much information,
quality journalism is more crucial than ever.
By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.