Yayoi Kusama (1929 – ), Mushrooms Aown, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 97 x 130 cm, Victoria Miro Gallery.

The Japanese poet Kazuko Shiraishi once said: ‘I wanted to pour milk onto poetry, and if possible I wanted it to be strawberry milk’. It feels in many ways as if her compatriot Yayoi Kusama has been doing a similar thing for the visual arts. These wondrous fungal forms attest to her unique vision of a world psychedic by its own nature: we do not need to consume the mushrooms, to observe them is enough. DH