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Lot Essay
With a creative career spanning six decades, Yayoi Kusama has continuously innovated and re-invented her style, creating iconic works that encompassed an astonishing variety of mediums, including painting, drawing, sculpture, film, performance and installation. Kusama's iconic dots and patterns were illustrations of her earliest childhood experiences, where the artist was engulfed with visual hallucinations. The artist recalled, "When I was a child, one day I was walking the field. Then all of a sudden, the sky became bright over the mountains, and I saw clearly the very image I was about to paint appear in the sky. I also saw violets which I was painting multiply to cover the doors, windows, and even my body. It was then I learned the idea of self-obliteration. I immediately transferred the idea onto a canvas. It was a hallucination only the mentally-ill can experience." In 1977, plagued by these psychological hallucinations, the artist voluntarily committed herself permanently into a hospital, where she has lived since.
The voluminous and repetitive patterns are formed into bellowing pillows in Sunset Clouds (Lot 502). These nebulous shapes in the colours of red, blue and white, fluidly glide towards each other creating a wavering duvet. Dark spaces intermittently scattered across, creating a sense of depth. The net pattern covering the surface adds both visual and textural variety. The amorphous shapes combine with the suggestive titled, allows a boundless space for our imagination, conjuring up infinite possibilities. Kusama becomes mesmerized during the painting process, as if she is transported into her own inner world. The net appears to be her way of creating a veil that shields her from reality.
The bulbous Red Pumpkin (Lot 501) is one of the most iconic and beloved motifs of Yayoi Kusama. The pumpkin is at once profoundly autobiographical and surreal, with an onslaught of bedecked with a myriad of glistening dots juxtaposed against crystallised formations in red, the Pumpkin is bursting with psychedelic vibrancy. This optical effect is a testament of the artist's attention to detail; each section is attended to with precision and devotion. The result is a light and playful intermingling of patterns and mesmerising in its rhythmic quality. Kusama's repetition of black dots and mosaic patterns epitomises the visual illusions she experienced throughout her life, therefore, pumpkin is an invitation to share with her the surreal visual journey of her inner world.
The voluminous and repetitive patterns are formed into bellowing pillows in Sunset Clouds (Lot 502). These nebulous shapes in the colours of red, blue and white, fluidly glide towards each other creating a wavering duvet. Dark spaces intermittently scattered across, creating a sense of depth. The net pattern covering the surface adds both visual and textural variety. The amorphous shapes combine with the suggestive titled, allows a boundless space for our imagination, conjuring up infinite possibilities. Kusama becomes mesmerized during the painting process, as if she is transported into her own inner world. The net appears to be her way of creating a veil that shields her from reality.
The bulbous Red Pumpkin (Lot 501) is one of the most iconic and beloved motifs of Yayoi Kusama. The pumpkin is at once profoundly autobiographical and surreal, with an onslaught of bedecked with a myriad of glistening dots juxtaposed against crystallised formations in red, the Pumpkin is bursting with psychedelic vibrancy. This optical effect is a testament of the artist's attention to detail; each section is attended to with precision and devotion. The result is a light and playful intermingling of patterns and mesmerising in its rhythmic quality. Kusama's repetition of black dots and mosaic patterns epitomises the visual illusions she experienced throughout her life, therefore, pumpkin is an invitation to share with her the surreal visual journey of her inner world.