.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
‘Pushing away the bushes of zinnia, I reached in and pulled a pumpkin from its stalk. It was in this moment the pumpkin came alive and began talking to me. The freshly-picked pumpkin was covered with dew. As it glistened in the sunlight, its gorgeousness was indescribable’ – Yayoi Kusama
Painted a golden yellow, Pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama is a joyful and charming incarnation of the artist’s iconic motif. Kusama’s obsession with pumpkins dates to her childhood, during which she identified a comfort in the humorous proliferating forms; their multiplicity echoed her own debilitating hallucinations, which she began to experience at the age of ten. Initially and briefly, she sketched the fruit in the traditional Japanese style of Nihonga, only to put aside the subject until 1975. Already world-renowned for her Infinity Nets, a painterly manifestation of her staggering visions, she began to cover the protuberant fruit with webs of polka-dots. For her acclaimed presentation at the Japanese pavilion at the 45th Venice Biennale, 1993, Kusama exhibited a mirrored room bursting with tiny pumpkin sculptures. Following the Biennale, she continued to develop the motif in an array of sizes and media. Adorned with ribbons of black speckling, which parallel her all-consuming phantasms, Pumpkin represents the fullest integration of artist and object and serves as a token of solace. Repetition is a central technique for Kusama, who seeks a form of self-obliteration within its limitless sprawl: ‘By obliterating one's individual self, one returns to the infinite universe,’ she has said (Y. Kusama, quoted in G. Turner, “Yayoi Kusama,” Bomb, no. 66, Winter 1999). A sustaining thread throughout Kusama’s practice is her belief in art’s curative powers, and her work encourages this unburdening. By embracing its own distinctiveness, Pumpkin emanates a profound vitality and offers a means for the artist’s own liberation.
Painted a golden yellow, Pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama is a joyful and charming incarnation of the artist’s iconic motif. Kusama’s obsession with pumpkins dates to her childhood, during which she identified a comfort in the humorous proliferating forms; their multiplicity echoed her own debilitating hallucinations, which she began to experience at the age of ten. Initially and briefly, she sketched the fruit in the traditional Japanese style of Nihonga, only to put aside the subject until 1975. Already world-renowned for her Infinity Nets, a painterly manifestation of her staggering visions, she began to cover the protuberant fruit with webs of polka-dots. For her acclaimed presentation at the Japanese pavilion at the 45th Venice Biennale, 1993, Kusama exhibited a mirrored room bursting with tiny pumpkin sculptures. Following the Biennale, she continued to develop the motif in an array of sizes and media. Adorned with ribbons of black speckling, which parallel her all-consuming phantasms, Pumpkin represents the fullest integration of artist and object and serves as a token of solace. Repetition is a central technique for Kusama, who seeks a form of self-obliteration within its limitless sprawl: ‘By obliterating one's individual self, one returns to the infinite universe,’ she has said (Y. Kusama, quoted in G. Turner, “Yayoi Kusama,” Bomb, no. 66, Winter 1999). A sustaining thread throughout Kusama’s practice is her belief in art’s curative powers, and her work encourages this unburdening. By embracing its own distinctiveness, Pumpkin emanates a profound vitality and offers a means for the artist’s own liberation.