Yayoi Kusama

Acquired by the present owner directly from the artist
Beate and Joseph Gordon Collection, New York

This work is in generally very good condition overall. The paper might appear to be slightly yellowing around the edges. The work is framed under plexiglas and was not examined out of frame.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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The artwork of renowned Japanese artist Kusama Yayoi is always autobiographical in one way or another.  From her earliest drawings referencing the abundant natural landscape of her rural hometown of Matsumoto, to the large-scale paintings and watercolors completed soon after her 1958 arrival in New York and inspired by the rippling waves of the Pacific Ocean she'd just traversed, to her landmark Infinity Net paintings and soft-sculpture Accumulations that embody her obsession-based modes of production—each work of this extraordinary septuagenarian's career is directly drawn from the far reaches of her inner soul.  The works offered here are no exception, serving as prime examples of her later work and testaments to her highly personal artistic journey. 

The two pumpkin paintings included here, Kabocha (Yellow) and Kabocha (Green) from the early 1990's (Lots 168 and 170), exemplify the artist's never-ending fascination with natural forms, covered though they are with polka dots and set against a net of interlocking triangular forms.  Kusama's trademark pumpkins dominate the center of the picture plane; with their organic curves and near neon colors, they seem to be space aliens alighted on the gallery wall. Self-referential in their polka-dotted and netted excesses, dots and webs loom large in the artist's vision, the result of a chronic psychiatric condition that can hardly be viewed as a handicap.  Indeed, Kusama's mind propels her imagination to unusually fertile fields completely inaccessible to most, though nevertheless referencing the sweeping farms and verdant countryside of her childhood. 

The 1997 painting Nets (Red on Black) (Lot 167) also recalls the artist's past and her invention of the Infinity Nets motif in the late 1950's during her extended New York sojourn.  Kusama consciously strove to create a new painting method, and she found success in her "all-over" skeins of paint that completely covered the canvas; these works originated with white on white compositions but soon metamorphosed into predominantly two-color compositions, of which Nets (Red on Black) is a distinguished descendant.  These works garnered Kusama accolades from the most powerful New York critics in the early 1960's, propelled her career forward, and established her identity in art circles of the time.

The beautiful Untitled collage from 1962 (Lot 166) is indicative of Kusama's pursuits and cultural context during that period of extraordinary creativity.  In the wake of Jackson Pollock, "all-over" compositions had become a recognized strategy of avant-garde art and would ultimately open the door to a tremendous diversity of production - from Allen Kaprow's anarchical "Happenings" in the realm of performance to Eva Hesse's organic installations to Frank Stella's seemingly machine-tooled black paintings that signaled the dawn of Minimalism.   Kusama's collage of oval stickers in an "all-over" format may signal her awareness of the latest pictorial strategies and point towards her fascination with eggs and their form at this stage in her career; but more than this, the work is a humble manifestation of an idiosyncratic vocabulary that is uniquely her own.  Though comprised of readymade stickers, a material she used to economize during a financially unstable time, these are the formal siblings of the visionary dots that would soon cover everything in sight in her much celebrated installations of the 1960's.

Perhaps most unusual among the works on offer is the sculpture Kyonen no Kadan ("Last Year's Flower Garden") from 1988 (Lot 169).  It is most likely a self-portrait in which a silver female doll covered in red and green glitter, surrounded by peacock feathers, and sitting in a yellow wicker basket, serves as the artist's surrogate.  The figure wears a sparkling red hat and sits upon a field of shimmering objects.  The work no doubt references the artist's childhood years; her family ran a horticultural nursery in Matsumoto, keeping Kusama surrounded by flowers throughout her youth.  The inclusion of egg forms in the work is also self-referential, a remembrance of works Kusama created in 1960 and 1962 from industrial-sized egg cartons.  Other forms in the basket hint at her Accumulations of that period, which included sofas, chairs, ladders and other objects covered in phallic-shaped protrusions.  In this line of thinking, the field of objects upon which the doll is poised becomes a zone of male (phallic forms) and female (egg forms) exchange, and the surrogate Kusama rules over the realm of sex, a position the artist herself took as director and orchestrator of her own Happenings in the 1960's, which frequently included polka-dot covered nude actors and actresses engaging in orgiastic public performances.  Kusama was said to have a mild phobia of the male sex organ, which she in some sense overcame through her phallus-covered objects.  She seems to do so again in Kyonen no Kadan, which situates her childhood innocence atop an erotically-charged field of omnisexual phallus-eggs.

Whether through autobiographical references to her past life or past production, or the frequent appearance of the artist in photographs of her large-scale installations (often dressed in a matching outfit), Kusama Yayoi is forever present in everything she produces.  It would not be a stretch to say that Kusama takes comfort in knowing that she is a constant element in her work—that she resides in it for eternity.  Indeed, Kusama has taken shelter from the world in her prolific art-making practice of more than fifty years.  It is a practice that protects and nourishes her in equal measure.  The inseparable two-way relationship between Kusama Yayoi and her work results in an autobiographical oeuvre that resonates with the fullness of her life and thoughts.

-Eric C. Shiner