EXHIBITED:
Yayoi Kusama Pumpkins, Victoria Miro, London,
September 16 - December 19, 2014

This Painting is to be sold with a registration card issued by Yayoi Kusama Studio

Kusama has been a household name on the global art scene since the 1960s, and remains active today at the age of 88. Unsurprisingly, her off-the-wall rig-outs and unique personality have also attracted a fair share of criticism, but nothing can obscure the fact that she has already achieved legendary status. After returning to Japan, she checked herself into an open mental health facility, where she has lived ever since. But that has not prevented her from going to her studio—located just opposite the hospital—every day and working on some new project, a routine she maintains to this day. She has been considered one of the most respectable female Asian artist in the world.

From the childhood, Kusama displayed outstanding artistic talent, and during her youth she learned to paint traditional Japanese-style paintings in a variety of mediums, including gouache and pastel. Encouraged by eminent American female artist Georgia O'Keeffe, she moved to New York in 1957, where her creative abilities soon blossomed in a much more open and tolerant environment. She greatly expanded her vision, and her oeuvre soon comprised not just paintings, but also soft sculptures, performance art, installations, and films. Her themes and formats ranged from pop art, feminism and surrealism to Art Brut (outsider art), abstract expressionism, and happenings. In 1993, Kusama represented Japan in the 45th Venice Biennale. Since then, she became famous for her works on pumpkins and was invited to create large installations, such as the outdoor sculpture at Fukuoka Municipal Museum. The subject of pumpkins came from her childhood. During the war, her family planted pumpkins at home. She said, As a child, I used to play in the garden at home. The pumpkins that I plucked out would talk to me. Pumpkins have such lovely shapes... What attracts me are their unpowdered big bellies and their strong sense of security. Eventually, after 17 years in New York, she returned to live in Japan in 1973. Two years later, in 1975, she began to do collages, and in 1979 expanded her repertoire to include prints. She also started to work as a writer, and her 1983 novel The Hustler's Grotto of Christopher Street won the Tenth Literary Award for New Writers from the monthly magazine Yasei Jidai. Generally speaking, Kusama enjoyed much success and created numerous new works after returning to her native country. Finally, her life had entered a phase of relative stability, and the hardships and efforts of her earlier life were now paying off.

Kusama has a partiality for dots due to her hallucinatory visions. She covers the surfaces of all kinds of materials - walls, floors, canvases, objects, human bodies, and even herself - in dots. And by expanding dots into infinity through repeated lines, her work confounds the existence of real space, bringing the viewers into unconscious states of dizziness, not knowing whether they are in reality or illusions. Her diverse creative mediums and themes are beloved by many, including multitudes of museums and private collectors. Her work moreover once set an auction record of 5 million US dollars, highest of all living female artists. This large pumpkin artwork is a 2-dimensional, partially 3-dimensional piece. The artist engages in continuous dialog with her inner self through the use of this adored and treasured theme, and through these soliloquies finds both a sense of belonging and an exit for her tortured soul. Kusama Yayoi incorporates her experiences of hallucination into her work, thereby relieving stress through the creation of stunning, awe-inspiring art. She explains, This is how I let the shock and fear I am almost succumbed by settle and abate; these experiences are why I started painting. This particular piece, an artwork titled Pumpkin created in the year 2013 that embodies the round, uniquely supple form of the plump vegetable, is certainly a rarity, the first semi-sculpture of its kind made available on the auction market.

In the presence of Kusama Yayoi's art, the visual impact felt by viewers is always infused with a sense of surprise and child-like wonder; this powerful artistic expression however could not have been possible without the crystallization and sublimation of the artist's extreme and excruciating torment. She is haunted by visions, but her pain has never defeated her commitment towards artistic endeavors. It is commendable how she strives to bear the unbearable and finds unique and powerful creativity in her visions by erasing the hallucinations with each stroke of her brush and transforming them into the most mesmerizing and memorable artworks. It is precisely through this persistence and dedication that Kusama Yayoi has been able to attain some of the most exceptional achievements throughout the history of world art.