C aught within a web of monochromatic yellow colour, Yayoi Kusama’s Self Obliteration (1980) represents an exceedingly rare and enigmatic example of the artist’s theatrical sculptures of the 1980s. Often moving between the abstract and the representational, between the strange and the familiar, Self Obliteration erupts the apparent homeliness of domesticity, revealing a lurking civilisational horror behind humanity’s attempts to master nature and usurp it with the comfort of industry and consumerism. Beneath a slithering mass of tangled yellow tendrils lies innocuous domestic objects lain out across a dinner table and chairs; atop vases, homeware, a hat and a bouquet of flowers, every available surface of the present work is obliterated under Kusama’s accumulation of yellow roots. The ostensibly ordinary domestic setting and its contents come together in one collects ive plane of experience, united by hundreds of web-like tendrils. Communicating an important.mes ssage of hope and rebirth, both the work and the work’s title deeply resonates with Kusama’s idea of self-obliteration and regeneration. A museum-quality work and the first from the series to be offered at auction, Self Obliteration is a multiplicitous example of Kusama’s seven-decade long fascination with the interconnectivity of life.

Succinctly articulating Kusama’s interest in the self-obliteration of the ego, Self Obliteration belongs to a series of sculptural works produced in the 1980s which bridge the human-made world and the world of the infinite. Kusama’s sculptures of this period offered an embrace of nothingness into which one must forgo their physical bodies in order to become one with the sublime of nature. Manifesting this concept in physical space, these sculptures require a conscious willingness on the part of both artist and observer to become part of the work in an act of radical connectivity. The motif of the table and chairs, originally explored by the artist during the 1960s and of which an acclaimed example was prominently exhibited at Kusama’s retrospective at Hong Kong M+ Museum in 2022, became a primary focus of Kusama’s artistic output of the 1980s. Similar installations from this period were extensively exhibited at the artist’s most significant exhibitions of the 1980s at Fuji Television Gallery, Tokyo, the first gallery to take on Kusama upon her return to Japan.

Within the disorientating and decidedly unfamiliar landscape of Self Obliteration, Kusama transforms household objects into uncanny doubles, making the otherwise familiar eerily unrecognisable. Upon returning to Japan in 1973, Kusama began to look back critically on her t.mes spent in America during the previous decade, exploring themes around nationalism and consumerism. Her use of domestic objects in the present work acts as a comment on the propagated “American” ascendant consumerism, democracy, and individualism she experienced as a young woman in New York. Vine-like entities encroach around the furniture and domestic commodities, hijacking their functional and cultural meanings as designators of traditional familial interiors and representations of the “home”. Influenced by the Pop art movement of the 1960s, which used household objects and the repetition of images and forms to explore consumerism and mass production, Kusama’s reproductions offer an exploration of Japan’s evolving relationship to everyday consumption. In the post-war era, much of Japan’s national identity had been characterised by the country’s thriving economy of the 1980s. The glorification of mass consumption is effectively obliterated through the perfusion of yellow tentacles in the present work, with Kusama emancipating these everyday objects from their social and moral attributions. This transformation through the transgression of the body similarly offers a form of emancipation for the artist herself from her own gender, nationality and status as a female artist within this otherwise fraught environment.

When Kusama first began exhibiting soft sculptures in the early 1960s, early observers described the work using biomorphic vocabulary. One critic described these installations covered with stuffed sewn fabric objects as resembling “eerie mould” or the “villi of some vast digesting stomach” (Brian O’Doherty, “Art: Kusama Explores a New Area”, New York t.mes s, 25 April 1964), with another describings these works as underpinned by “an almost helpless fascination with the processes of growth, repetition, and proliferation” (Michael Benedikt, “New York Letter: Sculpture in Plastic, Cloth, Electric Light, Chrome, Neon. And Bronze”, Art International, vol. 10, no. 1, January 1966, pp. 98 -100). Revisiting many of the themes she had been developing in her early career as an artist, both before her arrival in America, and her years spent in New York, works from the 1980s bare a resemblance to the strangely biomorphic sculptures of the 1960s. Evoking tentacles, roots and mycelium, the invasive yellow species of the present work entombs the familiar dining room setting within a field of yellow colour. Capturing the duality of Kusama’s attitude towards nature, which pivots between alienation from the world and an expansive sense of becoming one with the cosmos, the proliferation of these visceral forms reveal the boundlessness of the universe, becoming at once a memento mori and an affirmation that life is endlessly multiplying and therefore eternal.

As with all of Kusama’s most recognizable motifs, the present work bears autographic elements that relate to the artist's childhood in Japan. Like the roots shown growing amongst a traditional familial scene, Kusama is returning to foundational sources of inspiration through the present work. The flower-laden vase on the table is a direct allusion to Kusama’s upbringing on her family’s plant nursery in Matsumoto, surrounded by fields and hothouses of flowers and trees. The artist recalls that, in her youth, she “painted intricate pictures of the tiny networks found in leaves, butterfly wings…These covered the entire paper and looked like giant webs” (Yayoi Kusama, quoted in “Miss Yayoi Kusama: Interview prepared for WABC Radio by Gordon Brown, Executive Editor of Art Voices”, June 1964, in Hank Peterer, Ed., De Nieuwe Stijl, Amsterdam 1965, pp. 163 – 164).

This observation of nature continued into her formal training in nihonga, the traditional style of Japanese painting that privileges drawing from life and the use of natural, mineral pigments. Having remained in Japan during her t.mes in America, Kusama’s earliest paintings and sketches feature plants and flowers charged with psychic intensity, with a pervasive sense of decay and morbidity inflecting these natural scenes. Marrying her own distinctive visual language rich in plant-like growth and decay with Surrealist figuration, early works such as Accumulation of the Corpses (Prisoner Surrounded by the Curtain of Depersonalization) and Accumulation of Corpses from 1950 depict twisting, evolving, rope-like forms that evoke feelings of entanglement and anxiety, motifs which Kusama revisited upon her return to Japan. Seen in the mass of rope-like, sinewy forms of Self Obliteration, Kusama’s sculptural works of the 1980s find their roots in these early paintings.

It was during this period that Kusama was forced to reckon with the deaths of two important people in her life, one being her father who she shared a complicated relationship, and the other being Joseph Cornell, the American artist who had been Kusama’s closest friend in New York. Making hundreds of collages featuring plant and animal imagery that evoke cycles of life, death and regeneration as a means of erasing or fragmenting the physical self through pattern, this abstract concept is succinctly materialised in a sculpture like Self Obliteration. The concept of “Self-obliteration” implies that in order to enter the ‘infinite’ universe, one must forgo their physical body and selfhood to become one with their surroundings and with nature. Aiming not at the annihilation of the self, the philosophy of self-obliteration is to blend in with the sublime of nature, to observe everything, and to realise how the self is finite, yet interconnected within an infinite universe.

Baring all of the artist’s distinctive hallmarks, from its sense of limitless repetition to its innate theatricality, Self Obliteration communicates an important.mes ssage of hope and rebirth within Kusama’s obliterated, interconnected universe. A sea of yellow roots, Self Obliteration is a site of rebirth from which one might emerge, transformed, in an act of radical connectivity between the human-made and natural world.

草 間彌生的《自我消融》（1980年）猶如深陷單色黃調天羅地網中，在藝術家1980年代劇場雕塑中不僅極為罕見，而且神秘迷離。《自我消融》不斷遊走於抽象與具象、奇異與熟悉之間，猛力撕破家居生活的舒適安逸表象，揭露潛藏背後的文明恐怖真相。人類崇尚工業成就與消費主義帶來的便利，試圖以之征服自然、取代自然，卻惹來可怕夢魘，在本作品的觸動下，即如火山爆發般湧現。在一片黃色蔓藤的緊緊纏繞下，散布在餐桌和椅子上的家居物品顯得平凡無害；草間彌生的黃色羅網，覆蓋這件雕塑的每個可用表面，花瓶、家品、帽子和花束都毫不例外，在層層疊疊的根莖下徹底消融。貌似平平無奇的家居擺設與物品，因着數以百計的網狀蔓藤連成一體，共同建構另一境界的體驗。作品本身及其標題皆傳達有關希望與重生的重要訊息，與草間彌生的自我消融與再生理念互為共鳴。作為一件博物館級佳作，《自我消融》亦是系列中首次亮相拍場的作品，以複雜多重的特質，體現草間彌生對生命的相互聯繫，長達七十年的依戀與執迷。

《自我消融》與其他創作於1980年代的同系列雕塑，簡潔闡述草間彌生對自我消抹的心念與着迷，同時意圖連接人造世界與無限世界。這時期的草間彌生雕塑作品，體現她對虛無的信奉，人類必須捨棄肉身，投進虛無的懷抱，方能與至高無上的大自然融而為一。這些雕塑把概念化成具象，呈現於物理空間之中，藝術家和觀察者都必須決意成為作品的一部分，藉以實現全面連結。餐桌和椅子的圖騰，本為藝術家在1960年代探索的主題，當中一個為人稱道的著名範例，曾於2022年香港M+博物館的草間彌生回顧展中展出，更顯得非常突出，吸引眾人目光。其後，草間彌生繼續發揮這個主題，桌椅圖騰成為她1980年代藝術創作的焦點所在。草間彌生回到日本後，東京富士電視台畫廊首先垂青她的創作，日後更舉辦多個草間彌生1980年代最盛大的展覽，展品涵蓋大量此類裝置藝術作品。

在《自我消融》令人目眩且全然陌生的世界裏，草間彌生將家居物品變成詭異的複製品，使本來熟悉的一切變得難以辨認，散發令人毛骨悚然的奇怪氣氛。草間彌生在1973年回到日本後，開始以批判角度回顧她過去十年在美國探索民族主義和消費主義等主題的歲月。草間彌生以旅居紐約的年輕女郎身分，體驗各種急速崛起的「美國式」思潮，包括廣受傳頌的消費主義、民主和個人主義，而她在本作品中採用家居物品，正是對這一切所下的評語。家具和家用商品是傳統家居內部布置的代名詞，代表「家」的功能與文化，如今被藤蔓緊緊纏繞，其象徵意義亦遭蠶食掠奪。誕生於1960年代的普普藝術運動，利用家居物品以及不斷重複的圖像與形態，探索消費主義和大規模生產的主題，受此浪潮影響，草間彌生透過復刻雕塑品，探索日本與日常消費之間不斷演變的關係。在戰後時期，日本的國家身分，很大程度體現於該國1980年代的經濟繁榮。草間彌生藉着向作品傾注黃色藤蔓的力量，讓這些日常物品擺脫遭強加身上的社會和道德屬性，同時有效消抹對大眾消費文化的崇拜吹捧。這種顛覆本體常態的轉化，同樣在這紛亂不安的環境中，為藝術家本人提供擺脫自身性別、國籍和女性藝術家身分的出路。

當草間彌生在1960年代初開始展示軟雕塑時，早期觀察者用生物形態學詞匯來描述這些作品。一位藝評家形容這些被縫製填充織物覆蓋的裝置藝術作品為「詭異的黴菌」或「某個正在消化物質的巨胃的絨毛」（布萊恩．奧多爾蒂，〈藝術：草間彌生探索新領域〉，《紐約時報》，1964年4月25日），另一位藝評家則認為這些作品的基礎，在於對「生長、重複和增殖過程近乎無可救藥的依戀」（麥克爾．本尼迪克特，〈紐約家書：以塑膠、布料、電燈、鉻金屬、霓虹燈，以及青銅製作的雕塑〉，《國際藝術》，第10卷，第1期，1966年1月，頁98至100）。回顧草間彌生在藝術家生涯初期研究的許多主題，即到達美國前和旅居紐約時期的作品，會發現她在1980年代的創作，與1960年代的奇異生物形態雕塑有相似之處。這片黃色生物體以藤蔓、根莖和菌絲體的形態，侵入整件作品，淹沒熟悉的飯廳，將場景變成黃色原野。草間彌生對自然的取態，不斷在對世界的疏離感和與宇宙融為一體的遼闊感之間盤旋。本作品中茂盛繁生的肉體組織，捕捉藝術家對萬物的雙重態度，訴說天地的浩瀚無垠，既是警世死亡象徵，亦是對生命無盡繁衍、永恆存在的肯定。

與一眾草間彌生最廣為人知的主題一樣，本作品承載自傳元素，回溯藝術家在日本度過的童年時代。正如在傳統家庭環境中生長壯大的根莖一樣，草間彌生通過這件雕塑回到她的靈感基礎來源。 桌上盛滿鮮花的花瓶，直接指向草間彌生在松本市的家族苗圃中成長的經歷，她在那個回憶之地，受着滿是花朵和樹木的田野和溫室環繞。藝術家憶述自己年輕時「曾根據遍布於葉子、蝴蝶翅膀等等事物上的微小脈絡，描繪錯綜複雜的圖畫…這些圖案佔據整張畫紙，看起來活像一個個巨網。」（引述草間彌生，錄於〈草間彌生小姐：由《藝術之聲》執行編輯戈登．布朗為WABC電台準備的訪談〉，1964年6月，漢克．彼得勒編，《新風格》，阿姆斯特丹，1965年，頁163至164）。這份對自然的觀察，延續到她的正規日本畫訓練當中，這種日本傳統繪畫風格着重使用天然礦物顏料，描繪對大自然景物的柔情。草間彌生即使身在美國，靈魂依然停留日本，她最早期的繪畫和素描作品，描繪散發強烈靈性的植物和花朵，並向這些自然場景注入滿滿的腐朽與病態氣氛。藝術家以自己圍繞植物型態生長和腐朽的視覺語言，與超現實主義的具象融會貫通，創作一系列標誌性作品，早期例子包括1950年的《殘骸的積累（人格解體帷幕的囚徒）》以及《殘骸的積累》。畫作描繪扭曲縈繞、演變不斷的繩索狀物體，表達糾纏不清與焦慮不安的情感，後來草間彌生回到日本，亦再次探索此圖騰的主題。這些早期畫作，更是草間彌生1980年代雕塑的根源，這一點從《自我消融》鋪天蓋地的茁壯繩狀形體中可見一斑。

就在這個時期，草間彌生被迫面對她生命中兩位重要人物的離世，其中一位是與她關係複雜的父親，另一位則是約瑟夫．康奈爾，這位美國藝術家是草間彌生在紐約最親密的朋友。草間彌生創作數百幅植物和動物意象的拼貼作品，展現生命、死亡與再生的週期循環，藉以將物質自我通過圖案來消滅淨盡，或化成碎片，而此一抽象概念，正正清晰簡明的呈現於《自我消融》這樣的雕塑中。「自我消融」的概念意味着人們為進入「無限」宇宙，必須放棄肉體與自我，與四周環境和自然融為一體。自我消融哲學的宗旨並非全然摧毀自我，而是融入自然的絕妙境界，放眼觀察世間萬物，明白自我縱然有限，卻與無限宇宙相互聯繫，密不可分。

《自我消融》展露藝術家從無限重複感到內在戲劇性的一切獨有特質，在草間彌生的消融湮滅而互相連接的宇宙中，傳達希望與重生的重要訊息。《自我消融》的黃色根莖海洋是重生之所，沉浸其中的人衝出水面之際，即脫胎換骨，轟轟烈烈地全面連結人造世界與自然世界。