Chords for BBC Newsnight Yayoi Kusama Interview

was in London today at the start of an exhibition of her work at Tate Modern.
For the last more than 30 years Yayoi Kusama has lived voluntarily in a
psychiatric institution.
Her work is obsessive and often overwhelming and
since she's now well over 80 there's an awful lot of it too.
Steve Smith has been
to see a sample.
His report contains some flashing lights and nudity.
_ _ _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ _
_ _ _ [Db] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ Extraordinary is a much abused word in the world of contemporary art but [Gb] I
think we [Db] might dust it off for Yayoi Kusama, an octogenarian in a [Gb] wheelchair
who somehow conquered [Ab] both the art scene [Gb] and the fashion [Db] world from her base in a
Japanese psychiatric hospital.
_ _ _ _ _ _ Newsnight met the doyen of the polka dot before
her big new show at Tate Modern in London.
_ _ What is your [Gb] interest in polka
dots?
Why do they crop [Abm] up so often in your art?
_ _ _ _ Please ask that to my hand.
_ I've drawn lots of dots since I was a child and
covered my fashion and my notebooks with dots. _
Dots are symbol of the world, the
cosmos, the earth is a dot, the moon, the sun, the stars are all made up of dots.
You and me, we are [B] dots.
_ _ _ [Ebm] _
_ _ _ _ _ Her work is highly colourful, [Ab] playful but Kusuma
[Ebm] herself is [Ab] a sober [Bbm] and serious presence [Ab] especially for someone in a throbbing
red outfit and matching [Bbm] wig [Abm] and she says she remains committed [Eb] to her
long-standing [Ebm] campaigning for peace. _
_ What ideas are you exploring here? _
_ _ _ _ [Abm] These are my own work about my life, the deep emotion of being born human and the various
movements of space as we know them.
We can find [Ab] out all sorts of things about
[Ebm] these through dots.
Kusuma-san, _ [E] _ _
maya kara _ _ _ ukagai takata _ desu ka?
_ I wonder how you feel about this big retrospective here at Tate Modern.
_ _ _ _ This is art that shines out from the bottom of my heart, love human love and I
really wanted to display it in this country that I love, England.
[B] _ _ _ [Gb] _ _
_ [B] _ _ [Gb] _ _ _ [Db] _ _
[B] _ [Dbm] Kusuma collaborated with [Ab] musician Peter Gabriel [B] on this video.
_ What did he see in her work?
_ [E] _ _ [B] _ [Dbm] _ _ A really original [B] point of view, passionate intensity [Ebm] that was [Em] on the one hand [Gb] very [Dbm] childlike and on another
_ [N] very smart adult and quite disturbing. _ _ _ _
We had a few days just recreating some of
her work and a boat full of fallacies. _ _
Did one of your people say Peter we're gonna need to spend some more money, we're gonna have to go down to Wicks and just see what's_
[A] How did that all go?
It's quite hard to locate a boatload of willies so [Db] we definitely had to [Ebm] do it yourself. _ _ _
_ [Gb] _ _ _ [Bbm] I'm glad you brought those up.
[Abm] _ The [B] male member is to [Eb] Kusuma what the tree trunk is to late career Hockney.
[Db] Dare we ask, [Bb] what's that about?
_ _ _ [Db] I was very [G] afraid of [Ab] fallacies.
[Em] I haven't had sex. _
_ _ As a child I suffered a lot because my father led a very devout lifestyle and I came to hate sex.
_ _ As a kind of art therapy I created lots of sex, _ [E]
filled a room with them and I lost my fear. _
_ _ [Em] _ The psychiatric hospital where Kusuma lives became a refuge of her [C] own choosing after a [Em] bout of illness many years ago.
_ _ [Ab] _
_ For three or four days I didn't eat, I just painted and collapsed.
After three days then I went to psychiatric hospital.
The doctor said that I had to be admitted.
[Eb] _ _ [Bbm] _ _ _ [Abm] _ _
[Ebm] _ _ Critics are [Bbm] sympathetic to Kusuma's [Ab] plight of course [Ebm] but that doesn't mean they all love her art. _
It's fun, like a fizzy drink with all these spots [N] like bubbles.
It's got this endless fizz, it's effervescent.
_ _ Obviously we're told that it's driven by deep pain and psychological illness but that doesn't really come through in the arts.
For me I don't find it some kind of disturbing hypnotic ecstasy in this art.
I find it just a fizzy pop cultural style. _
Well the show's been fun but I'm really looking forward to this place, the [E] obliteration room they call it.
It's [Bm] not the bar by the way.
_ _ _ _ [B] This Orwellian sounding obliteration room is pristine at the moment.
But the idea is that visitors [N] to the show can come in here and completely cover its surfaces with brightly coloured [Bm] polka dots. _
_ _ _ [G] _ [B] _ _ _ _
_ _ [Bm] Drinking this BBC coffee.
_ [A] _
[G] _ [N] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Kusuma also writes, makes films and sings.
This one's a lament for her late parents. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Bravo!
Kusuma-san, thank you very much, very nice to meet you.
_ _ _ Well you hardly have failed to notice that the England manager Fabio Capello resigned a few hours ago