Yayoi Kusama’s mental instability and financial challenges resulted in the artist’s decision to return to Japan permanently in 1973. In a letter to her friend Udo Kultermann, she wrote: “I have come to the conclusion that it is better to work and earn money here [in Japan] and to spend it in New York (…) Above all, for the first time in several years I can sleep peacefully and without fear (...) I see no future in New York.”
During this period, she began a series of collages in which she used clippings from magazines and other found objects. Nonetheless, panic attacks and hallucinations soon overtook her also in her homeland, leading her, in 1977, to voluntarily admit herself to a psychiatric clinic in Tokyo, where she has lived ever since.
The three small-format works on paper - Eyes Approaching (1975), Bottom of the Sea (1980), and Insect (1980) - which were created after the artist’s return to Japan, are formally linked with a series of watercolors using pastel chalk from the 1950s, when Kusama was still living in Matsumoto. In the works, polka dots inflated into cells float before a dark background.
The work, Bottom of the Sea, leads viewers down into the depths of the ocean, where a crab clings to an infinity net beneath a coral reef. The animal depiction is covered with dots of glitter, framed by richly decorated vignettes and surrounded by a colorful background.

Bottom of the Sea
- Year 1980
- Material/Technique Guache, glitter, pastel and color print on paper
- Dimensions 66 x 51 cm
- Category Works on paper
- Collection Sammlung Goetz, München