Yayoi Kusama + two works 

Yayoi Kusama was born in Matsumoto City, Nagano, Japan on March 22, 1929 to a prominent family. A profound, if not traumatic, experience as a young girl of feeling obliterated in a field of flowers would shape her use of infinity and repetition in her later work. Kusama showed a talent for art from a young age, one that her parents did not foster. Her mother’s desire for Kusama to marry into a prominent family did not align with Kusama’s own vision for herself as an artist. Her parent’s unhappy marriage, punctuated by her father’s prolific cheating, impacted young Kusama. Her mother would often send her to spy on her father during his dalliances, which she believes led to her supreme aversion to sex in later life.

By the 1950s, Kusama’s watercolors were getting noticed in Japan but she wanted more. In search of what to do next, Kusama came across the work of American artist Georgia O’Keefe and wrote to her, enclosing some of her watercolors for her review and advice. O’Keefe responded and encouraged in not only her art, but for her to come to America. In 1957, Kusama moved to New York and diligently pursued showing her work. Her soft sculptures, use of repetition, and mirrored infinity rooms of this era “inspired” the works of top male artists in the New York art scene who went on to have great successes with these ideas, leaving Kusama to fight for her place at the table. After years of struggle and the often negative publicity for her infamous Happenings, Kusama returned to Japan and largely stopped creating art for years. After checking herself into a mental hospital with an art therapy program in the late 1970s, Kusama returned to art and today is one of the most beloved, popular, and prolific artists alive. Still living in the mental hospital, Kusama walks the two blocks to her studio every day and creates work after work. From expansive infinity rooms, to paintings, to collaborations with top designers, Kusama is in high demand for her unique vision, honed over decades of creating and innovation.

Pumpkin, created in 1993, combines two beloved elements of Kusama’s works, polka dots and pumpkins. Kusama would remark “I love pumpkins because of their humorous form, warm feeling, and human-like quality and shape.” The bulbous pumpkin rendered in a technique like zoomed-in pointillism with large and small polka dots on a black and white net ground displays Kusama’s deep reverence for the vegetable. Completed after Kusama’s groundbreaking solo show representing Japan at the Venice Biennale, this important example with its absence of color focuses on form and shape, somberly and reverently conveying the essence of the pumpkin. In 2014’s “On Pumpkins,” Kusama wrote:

Pumpkins are lovable 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 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 humankind on the earth. It is for the pumpkins that I keep going.

Untitled (Geometric) completed in 1993 is typical of Kusama’s work. The net of black lines enclosing dots and connecting the amoeba-like circles are rendered in a somber palate of gray and black shocked by the inclusion of vibrant chartreuse. It could be at once a gathering of planets or a grouping blood cells, each closing or expanding with the viewers perception. Completed after Kusama’s groundbreaking solo show representing Japan at the Venice Biennale, this work focuses her love of meticulous repetition and skillful employment of color.