YAYOI KUSAMA
Starry Pumpkin, 2017
Fiberglass-reinforced plastic and tile sculpture
183 (H) x 195 x 195 cm (72 x 76.7 x 76.7 inches)
Signed, titled, dated and inscribed ‘Starry Pumpkin Yayoi Kusama 2017 PT 011’
(inside the sculpture)

Provenance
Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, Japan
Private Collection, Asia
Whitestone Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
Private Collection, Asia
Kamel Mennour, Paris, France
Acquired from the above by the present owner

 

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 23 May 2021
HKD 21,850,000

Source: Christie’s
YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929) (christies.com)

 

On 10 April, 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues its grip and hardly an obvious time to unveil a blockbuster exhibition, New York Botanical Garden opened ‘Cosmic Nature’ on its sprawling 250 acre grounds, dedicated to Yayoi Kusama’s lifelong preoccupation with the natural world. Despite limited visitor numbers due to social-distancing controls and travel restrictions, the exhibition quickly became one of the most talked-about cultural events of the year. Images of the show – such as “Dancing Pumpkin” (2020), an exuberant 5-meter-tall yellow octopus with black spots, and “Starry Pumpkin” (2015, pictured) a radiant golden and red gourd housed in a conservatory amidst flora and fauna – filled the media, both traditional and social. This outpour of excitement and admiration for the exhibition underscores the enduring appeal of Kusama, her delirious portrayal of hallucinatory experiences all the more relatable during these trying times.

YAYOI KUSAMA, Dancing Pumpkin, New-York Botanical Garden

Yayoi Kusama was born in 1929 in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. She grew up in a family that made its living from harvesting seeds, and has been captivated by the pumpkin from a young age. In her autobiography, she writes: “What appealed to me most was the pumpkin’s generous unpretentiousness. That and its solid spiritual balance.” In 1958, at the age of 29, she moved alone to New York, and immersed herself in the city’s post-war cultural scene, quickly establishing a reputation for her controversial performances and Infinity Nets, paintings of dense interlocking loops with no beginning and no end. By the early 1970s, Kusama returned to Japan, and went through an intense period of depression, retreating to a specialist medical facility. It was during this period that she found solace and comfort in painting pumpkins, creating endless colorful iterations of the spotted fruit. Today, the pumpkin has achieved an almost mythical status in Kusama’s oeuvre, and stands – in many ways – as the artist’s alter ego.

Starry Pumpkin is one of Kusama’s more recent creations, a 2-meter tall sculpture whose surface is composed of a shimmering mosaic of blue and white squares. Neatly lined in parallel rows, the iridescent blue tiles sparkle and gleam, their colors fluctuating between shades of violet, emerald, and indigo according to the light. Kusama’s signature polka dots are expressed here in white orbs of varying sizes, the tiles laid in concentric circles, forming vortexes that draw the viewers into the artist’s cosmic universe. The effect is akin to the shimmering night sky, dotted with moons and planets, near and far. The present work makes an enchanting counterpoint to the yellow and red version at the New York Botanical Garden: the blue pumpkin represents the yin to the yellow one’s yang, the Venus to its Mars, the night to its day.