Lot 1061
  • 1061

Kusama Yayoi

Estimate
2,800,000 - 3,500,000 HKD
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Description

  • Kusama Yayoi
  • Pumpkin
  • fiberglass reinforced plastic and urethane paint
signed in English and dated 2010

Provenance

Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Condition

This work is generally in good condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

This work is accompanied with an artwork registration card issued by the artist's studio

A Pop-up Pumpkin
Kusama Yayoi

Just as Andy Warhol has Campbell soup cans, so does Kusama Yayoi have her ubiquitous pumpkins, all decorated with her famous polka dotted theme. Kusama, whose name has reigned supreme in the contemporary Pop world, is undoubtedly the most important living Japanese female artist of the age, and has single-handedly revolutionised the art world through her exploration of artistic genres as diverse as Pop, Abstraction and Minimalism. A contemporary of the likes of Warhol, George Segal, Donald Judd and Claes Oldenburg, Kusama’s name has joined the ranks of pioneers, and it remains at the forefront of artistic development, even as the octogenarian is soon to turn ninety. This is no less evidenced by her numerous exhibitions in recent years, with the monumental traveling solo exhibition “Yayoi Kusama: A Dream I Dreamed”, which made its way from the Daegu Art Museum in South Korea in July 2013 to various important cities in Asia. Her works are also part of the permanent collections of various world-class institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, and the Guggenheim museum. Needless to say, this giant of our time has shown unrelenting energy and her works continue to mesmerise. The current work on offer, a Pumpkin sculpture (Lot 1061), is the three-dimensional, physical representation of Kusama’s lifelong dedication to art, and is a brilliant artwork that captures the most instantly recognisable of Kusama’s symbols. 

Covered in polka dots and in a brilliant, deep yellow colour, the iconic pumpkin is at the heart of Kusama’s oeuvre and more importantly, childhood. Having first begun painting the vegetable during her Nihonga practice at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts in the late forties, the pumpkin only made a formal reappearance in Kusama’s body of works in the eighties and nineties. By that time, the pumpkin began to be featured with a matured polka dot motif that Kusama had perfected, such as can be seen in the three-dimensional room, Mirror Room (Pumpkin). The Mirror Room (Pumpkin) recreated the effect of a vast field filled with the gourds themselves, as the reflection of the pumpkin bounced off myriad mirrors ad-infinitum. Since then, the three-dimensional pumpkin has assumed an even more of a spotlight, being recreated in many large-scale outdoor sculptures, among which includes commissions for the Fukuoka Prefectural Museum of Art in 1994, as well as a permanent exhibition of the Pumpkin in Naoshima. 

The source of Kusama’s Pumpkin sculpture can likewise be traced back further than the repetitive projection of the vegetable in the nineties. As a child who suffered severe hallucinations, the artist remembers the source of the memory: “The first time I ever saw a pumpkin was when I was in elementary school and went with my grandfather to visit a big seed-harvesting ground…and there it was: a pumpkin the size of a man’s head…It immediately began speaking to me in a most animated manner.” 1 Later on, Kusama recalled that the pumpkin had with him a “generous unpretentiousness” 2, and emitted a “solid spiritual balance” 3. Considering that many of Kusama’s most iconic motifs stem from negative, even haunting memories, that the pumpkin is an entire “positive” one is significant. It embodies a sense of serenity and even joy.

When one inspects Kusama’s oeuvre, it is undeniable that one constant that has threaded itself throughout is the artist’s youthfulness and freshness. She has been able to translate even the earliest of her childhood memories into potent symbols that have lasted throughout the decades of her body of creations. As the most instantly recognisable emblems of the artist, the pumpkin is a lasting representation of not only Pop, but of the Pop-Queen, Kusama herself.
 

1 Infinity Net, Yayoi Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy, Tate Publishing, London, UK, 2011, p. 75

2 Infinity Net, Yayoi Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy, Tate Publishing, London, UK, 2011, p. 76

3 Refer to 2