.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin pulsates with the intensity of the artist’s focus as she placed dot upon dot in carefully controlled regulated rows on the surface of the canvas. The dots are densest along the central lobe and along the creases where the pumpkin folds in upon itself in segments; the pumpkin itself is an abstract form highlighted by the way Kusama represents it. With the largest dots—themselves no bigger than a few millimeters (the smallest are the size of a pin point)—running down the center, each side of the painting mirrors the other, further increasing the sense of energy coursing through the painting and hearkening to the artist’s use of mirrors in her installations. This topographical map of organic contours ends in a diffuse halo of red that gives the pumpkin an electric buzz. A webbed net painted in the same rust-red forms the background behind the pumpkin, connecting to the artist’s Infinity Nets, which together with the painted polka dots, form the foundation of the Kusama painterly language since the 1960s. The lacquer-like black peaks through the red lines of the web matrix, a reverse polka-dot that mirror the black polka dots on red of the pumpkin with which it is paired. Square canvas perfectly frames the pumpkin’s squat shape, further enhancing the visual echo of the painting.
Born in 1929, Kusama came of age during World War II. While other parts of Japan were subject to food shortages, Kusama’s village of Matsumoto was protected from famine. Her family operated a wholesale business with a storehouse full of pumpkins that sustained the family and the village. Pumpkins appear in Kusama’s work as early as 1948 when the young artist was only 19 and a student of traditional Japanese painting styles and techniques. In fact, her first award was for a painting of a pumpkin. Receiving attention and success in Tokyo, Kusama moved to New York City in 1958 where she called upon the visual hallucinations of dots and patterns she experienced since childhood to develop what would become her signature polka dots in painting, installation, performances and happenings. In New York, her polka-dotted wonderlands would influence and anticipate the coming of Minimalism, Pop and Op Art; her work provided a rich terrain that her friends and peers would mine in different directions including seriality and repetition, commercial produced patterns and Ben-Day dots, and the visual buzz of optical illusions, respectively. Since its early appearance, Kusama’s use of the pumpkin motif has grown to include sculpture in metal and ceramics, with cut out and glazed polka dots, in scales ranging from small objets d’arte to the human-sized pumpkin patch she presented at the 1993 Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennial.
In 2014, Kusama recited her poem “On Pumpkins” in London, elaborating on the spiritual connection she feels to the fruit: “Pumpkins are loveable and their wonderfully wild and humorous atmosphere never ceases to capture the hearts of people. I adore pumpkins. As my spiritual home since childhood, and with their infinite spirituality, they contribute to the peace of mankind across the world and to the celebration of humanity. And by doing so they make me feel at peace. Pumpkins bring about poetic peace in my mind. Pumpkins talk to me. Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins. Giving off an aura of my sacred mental state, they embody a base for the joy of living; a living shared by all of humankind on the earth. It is for the pumpkins that I keep on going” (Y. Kusama reciting “On Pumpkins,” London, 2014, https://vimeo.com/106409856 [Accessed March 2016]).
Through her spiritual kinship with the pumpkin, Kusama has been able to find relief from the anxious and obsessive thoughts that plague her. In her autobiography, Kusama writes of how painting the pumpkin, as well as the fruit in and of itself, provided a healing remedy that quieted her mind: “I would confront the spirit of the pumpkin, forgetting everything else and concentrating my mind entirely on the form before me… I spent as much as a month facing a single pumpkin” (Y. Kusama, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London, 2015, n.p.). In this way, Pumpkin represents a kind of communion, as well as transcendence for the artist, resonating and radiating with the spiritual charge the artist feels emanating from her subject matter.
Born in 1929, Kusama came of age during World War II. While other parts of Japan were subject to food shortages, Kusama’s village of Matsumoto was protected from famine. Her family operated a wholesale business with a storehouse full of pumpkins that sustained the family and the village. Pumpkins appear in Kusama’s work as early as 1948 when the young artist was only 19 and a student of traditional Japanese painting styles and techniques. In fact, her first award was for a painting of a pumpkin. Receiving attention and success in Tokyo, Kusama moved to New York City in 1958 where she called upon the visual hallucinations of dots and patterns she experienced since childhood to develop what would become her signature polka dots in painting, installation, performances and happenings. In New York, her polka-dotted wonderlands would influence and anticipate the coming of Minimalism, Pop and Op Art; her work provided a rich terrain that her friends and peers would mine in different directions including seriality and repetition, commercial produced patterns and Ben-Day dots, and the visual buzz of optical illusions, respectively. Since its early appearance, Kusama’s use of the pumpkin motif has grown to include sculpture in metal and ceramics, with cut out and glazed polka dots, in scales ranging from small objets d’arte to the human-sized pumpkin patch she presented at the 1993 Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennial.
In 2014, Kusama recited her poem “On Pumpkins” in London, elaborating on the spiritual connection she feels to the fruit: “Pumpkins are loveable and their wonderfully wild and humorous atmosphere never ceases to capture the hearts of people. I adore pumpkins. As my spiritual home since childhood, and with their infinite spirituality, they contribute to the peace of mankind across the world and to the celebration of humanity. And by doing so they make me feel at peace. Pumpkins bring about poetic peace in my mind. Pumpkins talk to me. Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins. Giving off an aura of my sacred mental state, they embody a base for the joy of living; a living shared by all of humankind on the earth. It is for the pumpkins that I keep on going” (Y. Kusama reciting “On Pumpkins,” London, 2014, https://vimeo.com/106409856 [Accessed March 2016]).
Through her spiritual kinship with the pumpkin, Kusama has been able to find relief from the anxious and obsessive thoughts that plague her. In her autobiography, Kusama writes of how painting the pumpkin, as well as the fruit in and of itself, provided a healing remedy that quieted her mind: “I would confront the spirit of the pumpkin, forgetting everything else and concentrating my mind entirely on the form before me… I spent as much as a month facing a single pumpkin” (Y. Kusama, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London, 2015, n.p.). In this way, Pumpkin represents a kind of communion, as well as transcendence for the artist, resonating and radiating with the spiritual charge the artist feels emanating from her subject matter.