Yayoi Kusama

A first edition copy of Kusama's first novel, ンハッタン自殺未遂常習犯, (Manhattan Suicide Addict) never translated into English, illustrated with the artist's own work.

• Yayoi Kusama (Japanese).
• Photography by Hikaru Sasaki (Japanese).
• Foreword by Herbert Read.
• Afterword by Shuzo Takiguchi.
• Tokyo: Kowsakusha/Workshop and Forum International, 1978.
• Includes black and white drawings by Kusama.
• In Japanese with English headings.
• Presented in the original orange and silver wrappers, with original orange dust jackets.

Manhattan Suicide Addict was written in three weeks "in a burst of manic energy," following the death of Kusama's longtime close friend Joseph Cornell and her subsequent return to Tokyo and entrance into Seiwa Hospital for the mentally ill. Remarkably, the debut novel of Japan's greatest living artist was translated into French only in 2005, and to date, no complete English version has been attempted. The text is a semi-autobiographical psychedelic vision of the artist's early years in New York City, illustrated with black and white reproductions of her dense, layered paintings and collages, full of quintessentially Kusama botanical, serpentine, lace-like, and polka-dot patterns reminiscent of her best-known and most popular work. The artist would revisit this period of her life in her much later autobiography Infinity Net: "New York was in every way a fierce and violent place. I found it all extremely stressful and was soon mired in neurosis.[...] My hands are empty now, but I shall fill them with everything my heart desires, right here in New York."