“Polka dots are the symbol of the spiritual peace and love, and the starting point of all of [my] hopes and thoughts. While there is Dots, there is Kusama.”
A
t the brink of the third millennium, Yayoi Kusama found herself at the crossroads of a new era for the avant-garde. In 1999, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo hosted a showing of Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958–1968, accompanied by In Full Bloom: Yayoi Kusama, Years in Japan, two major retrospectives comprising over 200 works from the artist’s practice before and after her t.mes
in New York. Executed in the same year is Pumpkin, an accumulation of the artist’s oeuvre across five decades up till that point, a test.mes
nt to her pioneering creative vision and style.
Fully hand-painted in her signature pattern and palette, Pumpkin stands as an exceptional example of Kusama’s prolific small-scale pumpkin sculptures. Core to her artistic legacy, the pumpkin is deeply connected to the artist’s past growing up near a seedling farm in Matsumoto, Nagano, where the plump gourd was commonly found. Voluptuous and unyielding, Kusama found solace in the sturdiness of the pumpkin. The iconic motif began to emerge as early as the 40s, with her first sculptures created in the 70s. During the 1991 Venice Biennale, the artist personally handed out small pumpkins to visitors, sparking the spread of the pumpkin as her own artistic symbol and allowing it to grow as she herself gained increased exposure. Presently, the pumpkin has transcended to be one of the most universally recognizable images in contemporary art and visual media, considered as the artist’s alter ego with various renditions of sizes, colours and mediums which aptly represented her growth and development of her artistic journey.
“He once griped, ‘What shall I do now? I am at a loss.’ I responded, ‘This, this is it’, kicking a square box that we had picked up somewhere and turned into our table. That gave him a hint for his box pieces.”
Encompassing the precious pumpkin is a hand-painted box, reminiscent of the structure of works by two of Kusama’s dear muse and friends during her t.mes in New York, American artists Donald Judd and Joseph Cornell. Kusama and Judd met in 1959 and, both finding common ground as poor emerging artists trying to find their footing and experiment with their art in New York city, formed an intimate and profound friendship. As neighbours, the two worked and lived closely with each other, with Kusama partly influencing Judd to create his box pieces when the latter was lacking inspiration, to which the present piece echoes in its structural form. Kusama then met Joseph Cornell in 1962, who, as an older, more experienced and established presence, highly cared for and supported her personal and artistic growth. An unlikely bond between two artists from opposite ends of the world, their connection too left an undeniable mark on each other’s lives. Kusama considers her relationship with Cornell platonically passionate, and once sent him a note, “You & me—birds of a feather.” Following his death in 1972 and subsequently Judd's in 1994, the present pumpkin takes shape with an encompassing box, tracing the iconic structure of their respective frame and box sculptures, suggesting a homage to two extremely influential figures during a pivotal t.mes of Kusama’s life.
Kusama’s self-obliteration is also a significant and highly personal visual and philosophical theme throughout her artistic development. The encapsulating box and the pumpkin within are meticulously painted with obliteration dots through inverting palettes of black and yellow, interplaying the visual dimensionality of the piece and transforming the dotted box into a separate spatial plane — a unique self-obliterated room. Originating from Kusama’s past struggle with her visions since childhood and later struggles with her mental health, the obliteration of matter and the concept of self majorly defined her artistic language. At once aware of her identity and the surrounding space, the pumpkin springs into life as a self-aware subject, reflecting Kusama’s interpretation of mortal existence and the ever-changing nature of the universe, ultimately making her own spiritual peace within it.
As one of the most recognized and respected faces of contemporary art, Yayoi Kusama has embodied the avant-garde across over eight decades of relentless breakthrough and creation ranging from pumpkins and nets to breathtaking installations. Nesting within the obliteration box, Pumpkin combines Kusama’s profound identity as an artist who found salvation and resilience in her art amidst her struggles and chaos, a diaristic witness of her inspiring development and artistry.