Yayoi Kusama

signed and titled in English and dated 2013 on the reverse

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

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

This work is generally in very good condition. Under ultraviolet light examination, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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."

Picture-Perfect Pumpkin
Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is an artist who needs little introduction. Arguably the most important living female artist today, responsible in part for revolutionising Abstraction, Expressionism, Emotionalism, Pop Art, Minimalism; responsible for breaking paradigms in all artistic fields and media, Kusama’s renown has not diminished one bit since her days of standing alongside key figures such as Andy Warhol, George Segal, Donald Judd and Claes Oldenburg. Instead, this fame has simply grown. Now in her mid-eighties, the octogenarian has shown no signs of slowing down. Bursting with energy, Kusama continues to work tirelessly on her pieces, producing captivating and intricate works, each more beautiful and mesmerising than the last. The present work, a meditative Pumpkin (DFLO) (Lot 1050) is a brilliant example of the culmination and maturation of Kusama’s oeuvre; a testament to the lifelong mantras that have guided her through her artistic career.

The artist’s recent solo exhibition, “Yayoi Kusama: A Dream I Dreamed”, which features more than one hundred pieces of Kusama’s most recent works, began at the Daegu Art Museum in South Korea in July 2013. This extremely popular and successful show has a schedule that makes its way through some of Asia’s most significant and well-known museums and art centres, including Shanghai’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the Seoul Arts Centre, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, New Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art, and Osaka’s National Museum of Art. But this is only a small fraction of Kusama’s weighty repertoire of exhibitions, which includes shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, as well as shows organised by the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Her diverse exhibition history is testament to the fact that Kusama’s oeuvre is one that is universal, accessible to all audiences.

At once recognisable, the pumpkin is ubiquitous to Kusama’s works. Aside from featuring the iconic vegetable, Pumpkin (DFLO) is covered in polka dots, rendered in a rich yellow, and set against a wall of nets: all of which are unmistakeable features of the artist’s style, a language that has evolved and been perfected through decades of near-obsessive production and reproduction. All the independent elements of the piece reflect a different Kusama philosophy, and though they can each exist strongly on their own, their unification creates a much more compelling narrative that fully captures the artist’s temperaments.

Though their first appearance can be traced back to the artist’s nihonga practice at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts in the late forties, the pumpkin only resurfaced in Kusama’s works in the eighties and nineties, along with the already matured organic polka dot, such as the 1991 three-dimensional mirrored room, Mirror Room (Pumpkin).  

But its existence in the artist’s imagination can be traced back further. For Kusama, the pumpkin was, and remains to be, an important memory from her childhood. “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 The anthropomorphised pumpkin can here be seen as highly linked to Kusama’s other encounters with animated plants and objects, such as her memory of speaking to a talking flower and dog in her childhood. However, unlike the traumatic feelings that the artist associates with the flower and dog, the talking pumpkin had a “generous unpretentiousness”², and emitted a “solid spiritual balance”³.

These sentiments can most certainly be felt in the present Pumpkin (DFLO) work. There is something undoubtedly peaceful and serene about the pumpkin; it is the very embodiment of life and vigour. Traditionally a symbol of fertility, the pumpkin also gives one a feeling of abundance and joy, not unlike the feelings one would experience when reaping one’s harvest after an arduous season of work. The present pumpkin also seems to emanate some form of energy, as all the arrows around it point outwards, acting as a magnet of sorts. Thus one can most certainly read the pumpkin as a symbol of strength, a vegetable that cannot simply be governed by external forces.

Repetitive net patterns are also a highly representative element of Kusama’s working method. Starting with the 1958 Infinity Nets—created in the same year that the artist first moved to New York—Kusama’s nets have become synonymous with “obsession”, a word that has graced many of her interviews, book covers, as well as art reviews. To the artist, this “obsession” with reproduction at the most minute level was and is much more than meets the eye. Looking back on her nets, Kusama remarked that hers was a “method opposite to the emotional space of Abstract Expressionism (which prevailed in New York).”⁴  Indeed, working against conventions and forging her own unique path, Kusama’s method was one that was primarily born of her mental illness; her way of combatting fears through obliteration: “artists do not usually express their own psychological complexes directly, but I use my complexes and fears as subjects...I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this ‘obliteration’.”⁵

Aside from being a way of fighting her fears, the process of repetition is also a method through which Kusama attains perfection. The more she reproduces an image, the closer to achieving perfection she arrives. Thus, the newly rendered Pumpkin (DFLO) is a true representation of Kusama’s endeavours to capture beauty and flawlessness.

“Forget yourself,” proclaimed Kusama, the “High Priestess of Polka Dots”, on a 1968 flyer for one of her art shows. “Self-Destruction is the only way out – but, after self-destruction comes Resurrection, a new life of oneness, peace and happiness with the other beings of the Universe.”⁶ This mantra, of “self-obliterating”, of blurring the lines between where one being ends and the next one begins, has been tremendously representative of Kusama’s oeuvre. Pumpkin (DFLO) no doubt exhibits this feature: it is hard to tell where the polka dots end and the psychedelic nets begin; it is as if they are one and the same, blending seamlessly into one another, creating an enthralling piece of oneness and cohesion within Kusama’s Universe.  

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

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

3 Refer to 2

4 Yayoi Kusama, “A Lone Woman Takes on the International Art World”, Yayoi Kusama Exhibition, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art, Kitakyushu, Japan, 1987, p.117

5 Yayoi Kusama, Tate Modern, 2012

6 Kusama’s Body Festival in 60’s, Access Co., Ltd., p.148