Doc of artist Kusama is enlightening

In the afterglow of the most Instagrammable art exhibition ever, “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors” — currently a popular draw at the Cleveland Museum of Art — you may want to know more about the enigmatic maker of eyepopping work.

“Kusama — Infinity,” is a new documentary that charts the life and career of the 89yearold Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who is best known for her hypnotic paintings of weblike nets and dots, in addition to the immersive mirror installations that are featured in her current touring show. Directed by Heather Lenz, the film offers insight and eye can of his signature rootsy, harddriving hits. Filming the sequence in urgent closeups, Cooper plunges audiences into the deafening world of stardom at its most engulfing peak, made all the more numbing by the cushioned silence of the limo that picks Jackson up after the show.

Desperate for one more drink, the rock star stops in at a little nightclub, where a waitress named Ally delivers a sensationally torchy version of “La Vie en Rose” in the midst of sundry drag routines. He’s smitten, and who dy, despite the fact that it is far more traditional — in style and format — than its subject.

To live up to Kusama herself would be a tall order. Famous for residing in a Tokyo psychiatric hospi wouldn’t be after the most adorable meetcute of the year, during which a spirited Greek chorus of trans women comment lustily from the sidelines?

Cooper allows the audience to revel in Jackson and Ally’s flirtations and courtship, which comes into florid bloom along with the tingly excitement of proximate fame, naked desire and unstoppable creativity.

Part of the fun of “A Star is Born” is watching Ally, who lives with her starstruck dad (Andrew Dice Clay), pretend to be immune to the seductions Jackson has to offer, which are sexual but also aspirational. When she finally succumbs, the audience does, too. And when he tal since 1977, Kusama has always mined her fragile mental state for her art, infusing her obsessive drawings, watercolors, collages, paintings, sculpture, installations and performances — created over brings her on stage for her big breakout, and Gaga lets loose with those pipes, the moment is electrifying.

As Jackson and Ally’s fates intersect, collide and finally, fatally diverge, “A Star is Born” lives up to the operatic tragedy hinted at by the arias that often play in the background. Cooper handles those tonal shifts with confidence as well, as sweaty immediacy becomes something more intimate and soulbaring.

It’s Ally — and Gaga — who owns the spotlight, stage and screen by the end of “A Star is Born,” which Cooper has succeeded in making earthly convincing and lavishly, deliciously largerthanlife at the same time. Kusama — Infinity Unrated many decades — with a sense of a lost soul adrift in a chaotic universe. In fact, one of the film’s interview subjects — who include collectors, curators, dealers, art historians and friends of the artist — refers to Kusama’s creative practice as a form of “managing madness.”

It’s a lovely (and apt) turn of phrase, about an artist whose true medium might be the expression of her state of mind, whatever physical forms that might take.

For the most part, “Kusama — Infinity” tells its unconventional story rather conventionally, beginning with the artist’s almost cliched childhood: Her mother disapproved of artmaking, scarring her daughter. Other psychic damage is said to have resulted from Kusama encountering her philandering father in flagrante delicto — leaving her with a permanent distaste for sex. (She shared that distaste, apparently, with her beau, the oddball Ameri can artist Joseph Cornell, whom she briefly dated during the years she lived and worked in New York.)

The film touches on many things: Kusama’s multiple suicide attempts, scandals involving naked art happenings, professional setbacks due to sexism and racism. Claes Oldenburg is said to have stolen the idea of making soft sculptures from her, and it is implied that Lucas Samaras ripped off one of her earliest mirrored rooms, made in the 1960s, with one of his own.

But in addition to focusing on such shocking and lurid biographical details, “Kusama — Infinity” also includes thoughtful analysis of the work, helping viewers to understand what it’s trying to say and why it matters.