Yayoi KusamaPumpkin Sculpture2013
2013
About the Item
- Creator:Yayoi Kusama (1929, Japanese)
- Creation Year:2013
- Dimensions:Height: 4 in (10.16 cm)Width: 3 in (7.62 cm)Depth: 3 in (7.62 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Cambridge, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2621213161812
Yayoi Kusama
Widely inspirational and innovative artist Yayoi Kusama has a body of work that is exceptionally varied, ranging from graphic prints and paintings to polka-dot pumpkin sculptures, hypnotic collages, large-scale installations and fashion design.
Even if you don’t know her name, you’ve likely experienced Kusama’s art — or have seen it on Instagram. Her soft sculptures and dazzling “Infinity Mirrors” are the stuff of selfie-takers’ dreams, but Kusama’s impressive decades-long career certainly holds far more cachet than it does fodder for today’s aspiring social-media influencers.
Born in Matsumoto, Japan, in 1929, Kusama has worked with her signature polka dots since the age of 10, when she began to experience vivid hallucinations and claimed that patterns and dots were moving around her, swallowing up everything in view. She started to incorporate them into her paintings as a child. Kusama saw circular forms and nets on every surface and became especially fascinated with the pebbles that lined the bottom of the creek near her childhood home. Her family was sternly opposed to her art and her mother physically abused Kusama and discouraged her at a very early age. She has suffered psychological turmoil her whole life and is vocal about her mental illness. Today, Kusama is a voluntary resident at a psychiatric facility in Tokyo, and she calls her work “art medicine.”
At the Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts, Kusama trained in Nihonga, a traditional style of Japanese painting that originated during the Meiji period. On advice she solicited from painter Georgia O'Keeffe, a pioneer of modernism in America whom she greatly admired, she subsequently moved to New York City in 1958. There, Kusama flourished, creating prescient sculptures and large-scale monochrome paintings that bridged current styles with minimalism, which hadn’t yet achieved any kind of prominence as an art movement. She pushed boundaries with her “Accumulations” series, which saw her transforming found furniture pieces into sexualized objects, as well as with an avant-garde staging of theatrical orgies on the street — both stemming from her anxieties about sex as well as an endeavor to make a feminist statement about patriarchal authority and sexism.
Kusama was captivated by Surrealists as well as the Abstract Expressionists and greatly influenced the Pop artists who followed, befriending such icons as Donald Judd — who called her work “the best paintings being done” — and Andy Warhol, with whom she exhibited and later accused of stealing her ideas. Kusama moved with ease through artistic circles and made a point to draw attention to her “otherness” as a Japanese woman by wearing kimonos to her openings.
In 2021, Kusama brought her floral and vegetal sculptures to the New York Botanical Garden and her works can be found in the collections of many of the world’s top museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. She famously collaborated with Louis Vuitton in 2012, and she created a 34-foot-tall balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan in 2019, becoming the first female artist to design a work for the event. In addition to her visual artwork, Kusama is a writer, publishing poetry, novels and an autobiography.
Find a collection of Yayoi Kusama art on 1stDibs.
- ShippingRetrieving quote...Ships From: Cambridge, Canada
- Return PolicyA return for this item may be initiated within 14 days of delivery.
- Swan SculptureBy David ShrigleyLocated in Cambridge, ONDavid Shrigley is an artist and illustrator best known for his mordantly humorous cartoons. Self-branded as an outsider in the art world, Shrigley is...Category
Early 2000s Outsider Art Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsResin
- 'Really Good' SculptureBy David ShrigleyLocated in Cambridge, ONDavid Shrigley is an artist and illustrator best known for his mordantly humorous cartoons. Self-branded as an outsider in the art world, Sh...Category
2010s Outsider Art Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsCast Stone
- Bugs!Located in Cambridge, ONMichael Corra is a Chicago-born painter and sculptor known for exploring the relationship between physicality and visual expression. With exhibitions showcased in South Korea and the...Category
2010s Abstract Expressionist Abstract Paintings
MaterialsOil, Acrylic
- Self-PortraitLocated in Cambridge, ONStephen John Crosby is a freelance photographer based in Toronto, Canada. He is a graduate from the Image Arts Film Program at Toronto Metropolitan Univers...Category
2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography
MaterialsColor
- The LoversLocated in Cambridge, ONMichael Corra is a Chicago-born painter and sculptor known for exploring the relationship between physicality and visual expression. With exhibitions showcased in South Korea and the...Category
2010s Neo-Expressionist Figurative Paintings
MaterialsOil, Acrylic
- The DocumentaryLocated in Cambridge, ONMichael Corra is a Chicago-born painter and sculptor known for exploring the relationship between physicality and visual expression. With exhibitions showcased in South Korea and the...Category
2010s Neo-Expressionist Figurative Paintings
MaterialsOil, Acrylic
- "Lolly Dogman (Clear)" Pop Art Clear Polyresin Sculpture of Dogman Sitting DownBy Gillie and Marc SchattnerLocated in New York, NYA whimsical yet very strong piece depicting the Weim from Gillie and Marc's iconic figures of the Dog/Bunny Human Hybrid, which has picked up much esteem across the globe. Here we fi...Category
2010s Pop Art Abstract Sculptures
MaterialsResin
- "He had Pure Thoughts with Blue Flowers" Dog Sculpture in Resin with FlowersBy Gillie and Marc SchattnerLocated in New York, NYA whimsical yet very strong piece depicting the Weim character from Gillie and Marc's iconic figures of the Dog/Bunny Human Hybrid, which has picked up much esteem across the globe. ...Category
2010s Pop Art Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsResin
- KAWS - Companion - Brown version- MOMA 2017 - Painted Cast VinylBy KAWSLocated in Dallas, TXThis is a brand new, in its original packaged, never open. Perfect condition. KAWS's cartoonish style—including his best-known characters with X-ed out eyes—has its roots in his ea...Category
2010s Pop Art Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsResin, Vinyl
- KAWS - FAMILY Figures - Black version - collectible Pop ArtBy KAWSLocated in Dallas, TXKAWS - FAMILY Figures - Black version New on its original packaging. Medium: Vinyl & Cast ResinCategory
2010s Pop Art Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsResin, Vinyl
- KAWS - BFF - Pink Version _brand newBy KAWSLocated in Dallas, TXThis is a brand new piece in perfect condition. Several months after releasing the KAWS Share Figure in February, the artist released his long anticipated KAWS Take Figure. The fig...Category
2010s Pop Art Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsResin, Vinyl
- ANNA KARA - Black & yellow MinnieBy Anna KaraLocated in PARIS, FRInformation: Anna is a designer who does everything with hands. She uses resin and marble powder for her creations, and we find on each skull more than 150 details. Born in Armenia i...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Pop Art Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsMarble