Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin: dot to dot veggie or metaphor for obliteration?

THE MOVING MOMENT WHEN I WENT TO THE UNIVERSE, a major exhibition of new works by Yayoi Kusama, takes place across the Wharf Road galleries and waterside garden. The exhibition features new paintings, including works from the iconic My Eternal Soul series, painted bronze pumpkin and flower sculptures, and a large-scale Infinity Mirrored Room, created for this presentation, Kusama’s twelfth exhibition at the gallery.

Image: Yayoi Kusama, All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, 2016 Wood, mirror, plastic, acrylic, LED, Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo / Singapore and Victoria Miro, London / Venice © Yayoi Kusama

This article titled “Yayoi Kusama’s Pumpkin: dot to dot veggie or metaphor for obliteration?” was written by Skye Sherwin, for The Guardian on Friday 26th October 2018 08.59 UTC

Going dotty …

The polka dots that make Yayoi Kusama’s 2018 Pumpkin appear to pulse go back to the Infinity Net paintings, which first established her in New York’s art firmament in 1960. Channelling the disturbing visions of all-consuming patterns she’d had since girlhood, these canvases were partly a challenge to tired abstract expressionism.

Vegging out …

Pumpkins have become one of Kusama’s recognisable motifs. The pumpkin mirror room for the 1993 Venice Biennale put her gourds on the art map, with fat, yellow and black sculptures reflected and multiplied to infinity.

Dear gourd …

Kusama has said she likes pumpkins for their “human-like” form and humour. Her fixation on repetition and infinity, however, has a darker side: a kind of obliteration, where you lose yourself in the vastness of her singular universe.