Pumpkin Passion

I am not admitting anything but I’ve been told that I have an obsession with cute, fat, Japanese things. Examples of this would be Hello Kitty or Studio Ghibli films. I now have something else to add to the list, Yayoi Kusama’s “Pumpkin.” I’d seen similar photos to the one above but hadn’t looked into them any further. Today, I did the follow-the-Google-trail thing and was completely WOWed that I’d missed her art work up until now. She often gets put into categories next to Takashi Murakami and Yoshitomo Nara —both of whom I love’s .possibly because a considerable amount of their work would fall into the “cute, fat, Japanese” category.

What most interests me in Kusama’s work, besides her use of pumpkins, is her life story. Kusama was born in Matsumoto, Japan in 1929. She labels herself as an “obsessive artist” covering surfaces of just about anything in polka dots.

From Wikipedia:

“Kusama has experienced hallucinations and severe obsessive thoughts since childhood, often of a suicidal nature…The vast fields of polka dots, or “infinity nets,” as she called them, were taken directly from her hallucinations…

‘One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and the absoluteness of space, and be reduced to nothingness. As I realized it was actually happening and not just in my imagination, I was frightened. I knew I had to run away lest I should be deprived of my life by the spell of the red flowers. I ran desperately up the stairs. The steps below me began to fall apart and I fell down the stairs straining my ankle…’

Today she lives, by choice, in a mental hospital in Tokyo, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s. Her studio is a short distance from the hospital. ‘If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,’ Kusama is often quoted as saying.”

Kusama has become a well-known pop artist here in the states. She moved to New York City at the age of 27 after having corresponded for several years with Georgia O’Keefe. She’s so well know that one of her works recently sold for over $5 million at Christies in New York, a new record for a living female artist.

The pumpkin sculpture pictured above is found at the Benesse House in Naoshima Japan, Kusama has done other large pumpkin sculptures elsewhere. I’ve been trying to find photos of an installation she did in the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale back in 1993 but haven’t found much. The exhibit consisted of a mirrored room filled with tiny pumpkin sculptures in which she sat in color coordinated magician’s attire. I love this quote that seems to surround discussions about her, “Pumpkin came to represent for her a kind of alter ego or self-portrait and remains one of her signature series of works.”

In my head, I’ve already begun planning a vacation to Japan in order to see the Benesse “Pumpkin” sculpture (I’ve also wanted to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum for years now) but for now I would settle for one of these Kusama tea towels:

Oh! So very pretty!!! I have spent too much time looking up Kusama’s pumpkins today but I’m glad I did. I still can’t believe that I hadn’t heard of her before today. I kind of thought of myself as a dilettante art nerd.. Anyhow, I leave you with this video from a Kusama documentary.

The photo at the top of this post is courtesy of RubyVrooom.