Pumpkin

Medium: Screenprint in colors on Verin d’Arches paper
[6 screens, 5 colors, 6 runs]
Year: 1991
Each Image: 21×16 cm (8.3 x 6.3 inches)
Sheet: 28×59 cm (11 x 23.2 inches)
Edition: 250
Artist’s Proofs: 25 AP
Printer’s Proofs: 4 PP
Publisher: Kuwabara Pumpkin, Tokyo
Printer: Okabe Tokuzo, Tokyo
Literature: ABE 146
Yayoi Kusama Prints 1979-2017, ABE PUBLISHING LTD, Number 146, Illustrated page 96

Signed, dated, and numbered in pencil on lower edge

 

Undoubtedly one of the most iconic motifs of contemporary art and of Yayoi Kusama’s incredible 70-year career, the polka-dot covered pumpkin combines the artist’s compulsive focus on infinity and repetition with a highly personal and self-reflective dimension. Kusama’s three pumpkins are presented in their iconic black and yellow colouring. Although similar, upon closer inspection the pumpkins are distinctly individual, with subtly varied leaning stalks and bulbous bodies. Kusama removes outlines; instead, the artist’s masterful manipulation of dots creates the different shape of the pumpkins, juxtaposing large and small dots to give the illusion of contrast. With complimentary colored frames, the triplet pumpkins speak to Kusama’s obsessive focus on polka-dot patterns – or “infinity nets” as she refers – which she uses to create something unique every time. Kusama’s bright and brilliantly patterned gourds are so closely connected to the artist’s identity that they function as both allegory and a mode of self-representation, acting as a universal signature of the artist.

“I adore pumpkins… Pumpkins talk to me, giving off an aura of my sacred mental state. They embody a base for the joy of living shared by all humankind on earth. It is for the pumpkins that I keep on going.”

As a child, Kusama began to sketch pumpkins in the wake of her first hallucinatory episode. At age 17 she made her public pumpkin debut with Kabocha, a Nihonga-style painting (made in accordance with Japanese artistic conventions, tools, materials and style), which she presented at a travelling exhibition in the towns of Nagano and Matsumoto. After these inceptive artistic attempts, the pumpkin motif disappeared from her oeuvre for decades, but then resurged in the 1970s and 1980s, following a period in which the artist focused on performance art. Pumpkins would take hold of her artistic practise, becoming an obsessive fascination for Kusama, owing to her deeply personal relationship with the motif. This interest was compounded in the 1990s, when the image was included in the artist’s interactive installations known as Infinity Mirror Rooms.

 

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Auction Results

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Phillips London: 6 June 2024
Estimated: GBP 15,000 – 20,000
GBP 22,860 / USD 29,147

SBI Art Auction: 28 October 2023
Estimated: JPY 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
JPY 6,325,000 / USD 42,060

YAYOI KUSAMA
Pumpkin (Kusama 146), 1991
Screenprint
Signed, titled, dated and numbered
From the edition of 250

Est-Ouest Auctions Tokyo: 24 September 2022
Estimated: JPY 3,500,000 – 5,500,000
JPY 5,808,000 / USD 40,830

YAYOI KUSAMA
PUMPKIN, 1991
Screenprint
Signed, titled, dated and numbered on the margin

Ravenel Taipei: 19 July 2020
Estimated: TWD 440,000 – 550,000
TWD 780,000 / USD 26,387

YAYOI KUSAMA (Japanese, 1929)
Pumpkin, 1991
Screenprint
Signed lower right Yayoi Kusama, titled Pumpkin in Japanese, dated 1991 and numbered lower left 48/250

Christie’s Hong-Kong: 23 November 2019
Estimated: HKD 100,000 – 150,000
HKD 225,000 / USD 28,750

YAYOI KUSAMA (B. 1929)
Pumpkin, 1991
Screen-print
Titled in Japanese, numbered, dated and signed ‘229/250 1991 Yayoi Kusama’ (lower edge)