Kusama’s pumpkins rose to global prominence in 1993 during her participation in the Venice Biennale. The artist presented Mirror Room (Pumpkin), a sprawling mirrored room filled with small pumpkin sculptures, reminiscent of an immense, teeming pumpkin field. Painted three years prior to this, the present early work showcases Kusama’s signature depiction of the pumpkin in an immaculate and precise web of jet-black dots against a crisp yellow bodice. In an unusual and rare instance for the artist, the pumpkin floats on a plain white background, commanding our attention for the titular pumpkin, as if in an attempt to draw in the audience in a powerful feat of hypnotism, perhaps not dissimilar to her later props placed in Mirror Room (Pumpkin).

Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkin motif is central to an oeuvre deeply entrenched in her childhood memories, and remains a trope that has featured extensively and consistently throughout the artist’s practice. As she nostalgically recalls, “The first time I ever saw a pumpkin was when I was in elementary school and went with my grandfather to visit a big seed-harvesting ground…and there it was: a pumpkin the size of a man’s head… It immediately began speaking to me in a most animated manner” (quoted in Infinity Net, Yayoi Kusama (translated by Ralph McCarthy), London, 2011, p. 75). Indeed, the gourd’s impression on the young Kusama’s mind was so strong that it appeared in the artist’s works as early as in the 1940s, depicted simply in light sketches, during her training in nihonga (“Japanese style painting”) at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts. They were formally engrained in her artistic production since the 1980s and 1990s, and her fondness for them has not diminished in the least.

Since its very first introduction into Kusama’s life and first forays onto the international art stage, the pumpkin will forever remain the most iconic extension, mascot, and metaphor for the artist herself.