V oluptuous, idiosyncratic, and exuding a fierce vitality, Pumpkin (2015) is an archetypal example of Yayoi Kusama’s highly coveted fiberglass reinforced plastic pumpkins. Rendered in Kusama’s signature palette of yellow and black, the meticulously-executed pumpkin sculpture measures at a monumental scale over two meters in height. One of the most admired and universally recognisable images of contemporary art today, Kusama’s pumpkins are central to the artist’s widely celebrated oeuvre, examples of which can be found in private collects ions and significant institutions around the world, including the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC and the Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan. Few subjects are as central to the artist’s widely commemorated oeuvre as the kabocha is to Kusama, whose profound connection to the pumpkin memorializes early childhood experiences visiting her family’s seed nursery, and can be traced back to a burgeoning, meditative practice of painting pumpkins during her early artist residency in Kyoto. Feisty and universally adored, these pumpkins are an embodiment of optimism, serenity and joy – an artistic and symbolic motif which the artist repeatedly returned to for “spiritual balance”, inspiration and motivation (Yayoi Kusama, trans. Ralph McCarthy, Infinity Net, Tate Publishing, London, 2011, p.76).

Cast in a luminous shade of yellow on a monumental scale, the dynamic patterns of black undulated dots of the present work induce a rhythmic, enthralling and lively optical sensation. Strategically and expertly placing larger dots towards the center of the curvaceous pumpkin while smaller dots slither towards the top and bottom of the gourd and gather towards the creases of the pumpkin’s skin, our eyes are drawn to the pumpkin's stems. As Gilda Williams notes, “On Japanese farms, kabocha are harvested prior to full maturity and continue to ripen off of the vine; perhaps for this reason in Kusama’s sculpture the broken stem always emphatically protrudes upwards, untethered to the earth below” (Gilda Williams, quoted in Yayoi Kusama: Bronze Pumpkins, London 2014, p. 6). Here Kusama reverses the color patterning between the stem and the body of the pumpkin, and carefully endows the top of the pumpkin’s upward-turned stem with numerous small dots, leaving no element of the pumpkin without an intricate, repetitive design. Weaving an intricate balance between the matured pumpkin’s organic form, and the profoundly delicate and seemingly boundless idiosyncratic ribbons of dots, Pumpkin is the paradigm of the artist's unequivocally consummate and impeccable oeuvre.

The pumpkin is perhaps the most beloved of Kusama’s motifs, owing to their grounding and spiritually-balanced energy that Kusama recognized even in childhood. She notes in her autobiography: “the first t.mes 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.” (Yayoi Kusama, tr. Ralph McCarthy, Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, London 2011, p. 76) In Japanese, she notes, the word “pumpkin head” was an epithet used to disparage unsightly or unbecoming men and women (Ibid., p. 75). But for Kusama, she was “enchanted by their charming and winsome form. What appealed…most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness. That and its solid spiritual base.” (Ibid.) Years later, following World War II, Kusama moved from her hometown of Matsumoto to study the traditional Nihonga style of painting at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts, where she often worked relentlessly from dawn until dusk on pumpkin paintings that she spread across the floorboards of her room. Recalling this period, Kusama notes that the practice of painting pumpkins instilled a meditative-like quality to her days, and the diligence and devotion to which she painted pumpkins during this t.mes made a lifelong impression on her to maintain the subject throughout the rest of her career.

Kusama began to incorporate pumpkins into her dot-motif paintings, prints, drawings and installations, including the environmental installation Mirror Room (Pumpkin) displayed in 1991. The room was subsequently featured as the centerpiece in her exhibition at the Japanese Pavilion in the 1993 Venice Biennale, during which she presided over the room in polka-dotted magician garb and handed smaller takeaway pumpkins to visitors. Exhibition-goers were wonderstruck as they walked into a room covered from floor to ceiling in swaths of yellow and black polka-dots that seemed to stretch and proliferate into infinity as the result of a mirrored-cube placed at the center of the installation. It was a triumphant return, twenty-seven years after following her guerilla performance at the 1966 Biennale, and Kusama was lauded for her brilliant contrivance through a “finite box containing an infinite vision.” (Akira Tatehata, (“Magnificent Obsession,” Yayoi Kusama: Giappone - XLV Biennale di Venezia, 1993). For Kusama, the practice of covering objects in polka dots arose equally as a means of self-stabilizing, meditative repetition, as much as the production of profoundly exploratory experiences that could radically upend a distinction between objectivity and reality. Her ubiquitous polka-dot and pumpkin motifs forged a wholly unique aesthetic that articulated a rigorous, all-consuming language of repetition, accumulation and atomization that proffered an effervescent foray into the tenuous bounds between nothingness and infinity, selfhood and self-obliteration. The pumpkin, like polka-dots, became a form of self-portraiture that would continue to feature prominently in her works.

Exuding a sense of peace, serenity and vitality, Pumpkin imparts a feeling of abundance and triumph, much like the sense of harvest that the vegetable itself implies. For Kusama, bringing together the pumpkin and the polka-dot motif is as much a meditative practice of repetition as it is one that concerns the philosophical practice of disintegrating the bounds between finitude and infinitude that is profoundly personal to the artist as well. Kusama’s acute ability to weave deeply imaginative and interpersonal devotion towards pumpkins with a profound contemplation of her own experience cements her as one of the twentieth and twenty-first century’s most iconic artists, whose pumpkin sculptures are the exemplar of the artist’s luminescent career.

《南 瓜》（2015年作）外觀飽滿豐腴，造型獨特，展現充盈活力，是深受喜愛的草間南瓜代表作。今次上拍的南瓜雕塑採用了草間極具標誌性的黃黑配色，以強化玻璃纖維塑膠製作，高度恢弘，超過兩米。如今草間的南瓜是家喻戶曉的當代藝術形象之一，它是草間創作世界的核心，不少精美的南瓜雕塑已獲全球各地的私人和重要藝術機構收藏，例如華盛頓特區赫希洪博物館及雕塑園和日本福岡市美術館。在草間富有紀念意義的作品中，鮮少有主題能如南瓜般成為她的創作中心，草間與南瓜有深厚的聯繫，這種聯繫源自她年幼時參觀家族經營苗種農場的回憶，同時也追溯至她早年在京都研習藝術時，開始將不斷繪畫南瓜當成冥想的方式。草間的南瓜活力充沛，廣受愛戴，集樂觀、平靜和喜悅於一身，作為草間一再重返的藝術和象徵符號，為她帶來「靈性和諧」、創作靈感和動力（草間彌生，拉爾夫・麥卡錫譯，《無限網》，泰特出版社，倫敦，2011年，頁76）。

本作尺寸碩大，鮮黃色外皮上佈滿起伏跌宕的黑色圓點，圖案生動有致，帶來律動澎湃、扣人心弦的迷幻視覺。草間佈置圓點技巧純熟，有策略地將最大的圓點排在瓜體中間，而較小的圓點則向南瓜項部和底部排開，並聚集在瓜體交界摺痕之間，將觀者目光引向瓜柄。正如藝評人吉達・威廉絲所言：「在日本農場，南瓜都是在完全成熟前採收的，它們不連著瓜藤也繼續變熟；也許這就是為何草間總強調南瓜雕塑的瓜柄要向上突起，不受地面束縛。」（吉達・威廉絲，《草間彌生：南瓜銅雕》，倫敦，2014年，頁6）草間將瓜柄和瓜體的色彩搭配對調，並在聳立的瓜柄面細意加上無數的小圓點，讓整個南瓜表面都鋪滿精細重複的圖案。成熟南瓜的有機形態與圓點排列成的獨特圖案之間交織出精妙的平衡，圓點圖案繁密嚴謹，看似延綿無盡，本作無疑是草間展現圓熟技藝的典範之作。

南瓜也許是草間最喜愛的主題，她年幼時早已認為南瓜很接地，擁有安定心神的力量。她在自傳寫道：「我第一次看見南瓜是我唸小學的時候，當時我和祖父去到一個大型種子採集場參觀⋯⋯它就在那裡，跟人頭一樣大的南瓜⋯⋯還突然活過來開始跟我說話。」（草間彌生，拉爾夫・麥卡錫譯，《無限網：草間彌生自傳》，倫敦，2011年，頁76）她更表示，日語中「南瓜頭」一詞是用來貶損男人和女人醜陋或者不得體的渾號（同上註，頁75）。不過對草間而言，她「被它們迷人的外型所吸引，南瓜的吸引之處是⋯⋯大方而不造作，而且有強大的精神安定感。」（同上註）數年後，二次大戰結束，草間離開家鄉松本，進入京都美術工藝學校修讀傳統日本畫課程，當時她日以繼夜不停繪畫南瓜，南瓜畫都鋪滿了房間的地板。草間回憶那段時期時，指出繪畫南瓜為她的日子帶來沉思默想的空間，而她投放在繪畫南瓜的時間和心力成為影響她一生的烙印，讓她在以後的藝術生涯中一直以南瓜為創作主題。

草間開始將南瓜融入圓點畫、版畫、素描和裝置之中，包括環境裝置《鏡房（南瓜）》（1991年作）。其後在1993年，這個裝置於威尼斯雙年展日本展館的草間主題展作為重點展品展出，草間更披上有圓點圖案的魔術師袍，在現場向參觀者派發小型南瓜。走進裝置的參觀者莫不驚訝不已，房內從地板到天花都佈滿炫目迷人的黃底黑點圖案，房間中央放置了一個鏡面方體，圖案在鏡子間反覆折射，看似在不斷增加和擴展，讓空間不斷延伸。這是繼草間在1966年突襲威尼斯雙年展進行展演的二十七年後，以獲邀藝術家身分重臨威尼斯雙年展，她也因為構想出「在有限的盒子容納無盡視野」而聲名大噪（建畠晢，〈壯觀的執念〉，《草間彌生：日本—第45屆威尼斯雙年展》，1993年）。對草間而言，在各種物件中加上圓點的做法，不僅是透過冥想的重複動作穩定自我，更是製造深刻的探索體驗，從根本顛覆客觀性與現實的區別。她無處不在的密集圓點和南瓜圖騰構成了完整的獨特美學，呈現重複、積累和分裂等毁滅一切的精確語言，以活潑的方式探尋虛無與無限、自我與自我消融之間的含糊邊界。南瓜也如她的標誌圓點一樣，成為草間自我描繪的基石，繼續是她創作中的重要主題。

《南瓜》洋溢安詳寧謐的氣氛，體現了旺盛的生命力，讓人聯想到滿載收成的豐足和喜悅。草間認為將南瓜和圓點結合，既是以重複動作實踐靜思冥想，也是以極為個人化的方式瓦解有限與無限邊界的哲學實踐。草間天性敏銳，能夠將投射在南瓜的豐富想像和個人情感，融入對自身經歷的深刻反思，成就她二十及二十一世紀最具標誌性的傑出藝術家之一的地位，而南瓜雕塑就是她傳奇藝術生涯中的重要代表典範。