Acrylic on canvas

53 × 45.5 cm. 20 7/8 × 17 7/8 in.

Signed in English, titled in Japanese and dated on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Whitestone Gallery, Tokyo
Important Private Collection, Asia

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

A Warm Embrace through Darkness
A Pumpkin "Self Portrait" of Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is unmatched as a global art idol in the contemporary art world. From 2021-2023, she held the major solo exhibition Kusama: Cosmic Nature in the New York Botanical Garden, in which she employed a wide range of different coloured and shaped pumpkin sculptures imbued with the energy of her own character that amazed visitors. This was followed by a retrospective of her art work at the M+ Museum of visual culture in Hong Kong and she is currently once again working with LV, all events that have been widely reported around the world, emphasizing Kusama's enduring and borderless appeal. Indeed, her artistic achievements are well documented and since the 1950s she has consistently come up with brand new forms of artistic creativity. The work of Yayou Kusama is considered pioneering in several areas of artistic endeavor, including the development of POP art, assemblage art, minimalist art, performance art and immersive art, affording her a unique position in art history. In addition, Kusama's art has been collected by more than 90 renowned art institutions around the world such as The Museum of Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, as well as the Tate Modern in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

Yayoi Kusama was born to a family that ran a seedling nursery wholesale company in Nagano Prefecture, Japan in 1929 and from a very young age developed an avid interest in nature. However, as a child Kusama was diagnosed with neuroses which caused her to have auditory and visual hallucinations. Indeed, the artist once recounted how when she watched objects the spots on them often expand outwards and revealed she could hear objects and plants talking to her. In order to overcome these visual hallucinations as well as the inner unease and fear they engendered, Kusama started to use the creation of art to confront and overcome the mental, psychological and physiological difficulties she faced. Moreover, this approach also enabled her to later develop the Infinity-Nets, Infinity-Dots and Infinity Mirror Rooms series of art works. However, of all the objects that would “speak to her,” pumpkins were uniquely warm and special: “I first saw pumpkins when I was at elementary school, at that time my grandfather had taken me to a seed collection field ... and it was there I saw a pumpkin as big as a person's head and it animatedly started to talk to me. Its appearance was really cute ... I was particularly attracted by its original look, its fat and unpretentious belly, as well as its indomitable spirit.” As a result, Kusama started to paint pumpkins in the 1940s but her works were initially confined to paper and not particularly detailed. It was not until the mid-1950s that she first developed the more precise appearance with which the world is now familiar, and to this day pumpkins remain a key motif in her creative work. On this occasion, China Guardian HK Auctions is honored to present the iconic and very much sought after yellow on black background work Pumpkin, completed by Yayoi Kusama in 1990, offering art collectors everywhere a unique opportunity to add to their collection.

Waves and Melody: Pulsating Life Image

Yayoi Kusama uses bright yellow lines as a light in the night, against a thick black background, which she turns into an infinity-net lattice structure that warmly embraces the body of the pumpkin at the centre of the painting. In addition, each section of the grid is slightly different because they are all painted by hand, which creates an organic cycle and a world filled with a sense being alive. The yellow body of the pumpkin is covered in dense black polka dots and these extend outwards in layers from a central point, imbued with their own regular rhythm. If viewers look closely at the work they find themselves drawn into a world of boundless polka dot expansion and proliferation. The arrangement of these different sized dots and the apparently uniform gaps between them creates order from irregularity and forms a meandering dynamic akin to that of the external infinity-net. It also alludes to the rhythmic sound of the heartbeat or ocean waves, rising and falling in accordance with nature, all the while bedazzling viewers.

Self-Obliteration: Poetic and Independent Existence

Pumpkin incorporates the three classic elements for which Yayoi Kusama is most renowned: Infinity-nets, polka dots and pumpkins and the artist has noted: “My pumpkin paintings are obliterated by the use of black dots and nets.” Although a “representational” pumpkin is the expressed object, it is also imbued with Kusama's artistic spirit of “spatial obliteration” and “immersion.” As such, the pumpkin in this work appears reborn from the infinitely expanding “net' and “dots,” existing independently from the continuous spreading. Indeed, Kusama uses the opposition and contrast created by the arc line of the dots and the straight lines of the net to highlight the shape of the three dimensional pumpkin. As a result, viewers see a fixed image that “transcends the existence of time” among the back and forth and rhythm of the dynamic infinity-net and dots. Seen from a distance, the large round pumpkin seems to occupy the centre of the stage and under that spotlight it exudes a breathtaking sense of poetry and silence.

Growing Towards the Sunlight, Self-Portrait Composition

Where Pumpkin differs from Yayoi Kusama's more common “round and flat” depictions of pumpkins is that the artist employs a vertical composition, which showcases its rectangular shape. In this context, she takes her original depiction of pumpkins and makes it taller and longer in a way that is reminiscent of portraiture where the subject stands tall and straight before the viewer. The realistic wave-like ridges along the pumpkin seem to extend outwards and grow, as if alive, while the ridges on the bottom appear to firmly grip the ground and absorb sustenance from the earth. At the same time, the elongated body of the pumpkin and stem at the top appear to be striving to grow upwards or attempting to transcend the limited space of the painting and breakthrough the limits imposed by life. This mirrors the artist's own indomitable spirit, painting works that uniquely tell her own story as through the twists and turns of a rich life journey marked by constant self-transcendence. As with Yayoi Kusama's “self portraits” this painting presents a refined and unique style that grows toward the sunlight despite the challenges of life.

Price estimate:
HKD: 8,000,000 - 15,000,000
USD: 1,019,100-1,910,800

Auction Result:
HKD: 13,605,000