Painted, stuffed fabric, metal, rope and plastic filament sculpture

56 × 30 × 30 cm. 22 × 11 3/4 × 11 3/4 in.

Titled and signed in English and dated on the underside

LITERATURE
1998, YAYOI KUSAMA NOW, Robert Miller Gallery, New York, Plate No.1
EXHIBITED
11 Jun – 7 Aug 1998, YAYOI KUSAMA NOW, Robert Miller Gallery, New York

PROVENANCE
Robert Miller Gallery, New York
3 Nov 2014, Christie's New York Autumn Auction, Lot 418
Whitestone Gallery, Tokyo
Private Collection, Asia
19 Jun 2018, China Guardian Spring Auction, Lot 1844
Acquire directly by present important Asian collector from the above

This work is accompanied with a registration card issued by Yayoi Kusama studio

Whirling through the Dance of Era, Reflecting a Mind of My Own
The Roar of Yayoi Kusama's Sculpture

“I dare to enter the secularity, and I will bear all the pains and joys of the real world.”
——Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

The Only Sculpture with Sound——Butterflies

1998 was a fruitful year for Yayoi Kusama. She held nearly 30 solo exhibitions around the world in that year and opened a landmark large-scale touring solo exhibition Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama, 1958-1968, pushing her reputation and artistic career to the pinnacle. Butterflies was completed this year and shown in her solo exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery in New York, witnessing a key turning point in her return to the Western art scene.

Magnificent Peak, a Collection of Classic Characteristics

Butterflies (lot46) is the only “hanging” wind chime installation of Kusama, combining the essence of the Japanese nation with the classic personal art characteristics.

She takes the “birdcage” as the shell, the “butterflies” as the wind chime, and the antenna-shaped “soft sculpture” as the decoration, all humming in her favorite golden hue, conveying unique art and the words of the times.

In the golden birdcage, two hanging butterflies collide with the pleasant bell sound of “dinging dinging”, demonstrating the powerful vitality of the individual. Below the butterfly, tentacles-like fillings are all over the birdcage, wrapping the limited space in the cage with infinite proliferation. The phallus-like soft sculpture firstly appeared in her solo exhibition at Green Gallery in New York in 1962, which established her status as the Avant-Garde Queen in New York in the 1960s. It composes the most frequently used art characteristics of her with “Infinity Net” and “Polka Dot”. In Butterflies, Kusama deliberately creates an unnatural living environment. The ubiquitous soft sculptures confront the butterflies, suggesting that the social structure is seriously inclined to male authority. The work is like a three-dimensional “Infinite Net”. No matter what environment it is placed in, the external world can be projected into the installation, so that the viewer can melt into the personal emotional experience and dissolve in this work.

The Only Two Birdcages, the Only One Wind Chime

In her works from the 1970s to the 1990s, Kusama often uses bird cages to connect the oppressive feeling of individual experience with the oppression of female groups in contemporary social ideology. The most typical series among them is the Bird Cage series. She targets female celebrities and puts a layer of barbed wire on the canvas to make the person in the painting trapped in a “cage”, challenging the conservative atmosphere of the Japanese art scene with a clear sense of imprisonment. Once appeared, it became the focus of competition between the museum and the art market. Since then, Kusama created three three-dimensional works of cage construction in 1988, 1998, and 2001, with only the last two works can be seen in the shape of the “birdcage”. Butterflies is one of them, more precious than the Birdcage painting series. The sharp texture of the birdcage frame is in fierce contrast with the fragile life of the butterfly flying. The flake shape of the butterfly also creates a huge conflict with the three-dimensional space of the stone and the birdcage, but these external forces cannot shake the inner firmness. Even if the space for movement is restricted, it is still closely connected with the outside world through the transparent space around the cage through its ringing sound. The wind chimes originated from the ancient Chinese Zhanfengduo were originally introduced to Japan for “warding off evil spirits and resisting the wind with diseases and disasters.” The artist here deliberately combined the “butterfly” symbol with self-portrait meaning, grafted with the wind chime that has a long history in Japanese culture. Below the work, the slightly loose cage door seems to indicate the entrance to the new world, granting the flying butterflies with force in Kusama's personal life and even her art, witnessing another career peak of Kusama at that time!

Price estimate:
HKD: 1,300,000 - 2,300,000
USD: 167,000 - 295,500

Auction Result:
HKD: 1,560,000