CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/27/2026

Yayoi Kusama, (1929–2026)

In the space of two days, we have learned of the loss of two irreplaceable, unstoppable giants—both women who eclipsed everyone and everything that came between themselves and the sun. First, American musician and icon Dolly Parton, whose death, at age 80, was announced Tuesday, August 25. And now, Japanese visionary artist Yayoi Kusama, whose death, at 97, was announced Wednesday, August 26. Pictured here, Kusama’s Peep Show or Endless Love Show installed at Castellane Gallery, New York, in 1966. “This was the materialization of a state of rapture I myself had experienced,” Kusama wrote of a later iteration of this piece, “in which my spirit was whisked away to wander the border between life and death.… I intended it as an electric monument to love itself.… This was my living, breathing manifesto of Love. Thousands of illuminated colors blinking at the speed of light—isn’t this the very illusion of Life in our transient world?”