Exceptional Works: Yayoi Kusama

This online preview presents a selection of significant works by Yayoi Kusama on view at Art Basel and celebrates the tenth anniversary of the artist’s partnership with David Zwirner. I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, one of Kusama’s largest gallery exhibitions to date, is currently on view at our 19th Street spaces in New York through July 21.

“Accumulation is the result of my obsession and that philosophy is the main theme of my art.”

—Yayoi Kusama

Portrait of Yayoi Kusama at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, Netherlands, 1966. Photo by Harrie Verstappen

Yayoi Kusama

INFINITY-NETS [YJKLL], 2017

Acrylic on canvas

76 7/8 x 101 7/8 inches (194 x 259 cm)

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Kusama began painting her large-scale Infinity Net paintings in the 1950s, when she moved to the United States from her native Japan. This series of paintings was first created during a time when abstract expressionism was still the dominant style.

Kusama speaks of two concepts: obsession and accumulation. While from afar, the work’s composition appears consistently uniform, upon closer observation, the surface reveals the materiality of the paint application and the individual nature of the repeating impasto elements. The surfaces of her Infinity Net paintings undulate with dynamic depth and texture.

Portrait of Yayoi Kusama, 2013. Photo by Gautier Deblonde. Courtesy David Zwirner, Ota Fine Arts, and Victoria Miro. © YAYOI KUSAMA

“Since childhood, I have been painting, for no special reason, numerous dots and nets, drawing from the hallucinations that seem to appear endlessly.”

—Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama, INFINITY-NETS [YJKLL], 2017 (detail)

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama, Judd Foundation, New York, 2017. Photo by Sol Hashemi. © Judd Foundation. Yayoi Kusama Art © YAYOI KUSAMA

Kusama with Donald Judd in Tokyo, 1978, on the occasion of his exhibition The Sculpture of Donald Judd at Galerie Watari. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts

She went on to apply the obsessive, hallucinatory qualities of the Infinity Nets to her three-dimensional work, creating optical environments that merge concepts such as flatness and depth, and presence and absence.

Covered with vertical “stripes” of Kusama’s characteristic dots, the following work is part of a series of pumpkin sculptures made in reflective bronze. An edition of this work is in the collection of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin (M), 2016, (detail)

“Pumpkins have been a great comfort to me since my childhood; they speak to me of the joy of living. They are humble and amusing at the same time, and I have and always will celebrate them in my art.”

—Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama

Pumpkin (M), 2016

Mirror polished bronze, dye, and acrylic lacquer

41 3/8 x 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 inches (105.1 x 89.8 x 89.8 cm)

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Installation view, Yayoi Kusama, Pumpkin, 2022, Naoshima, Japan. Photo by Tadasu Yamamoto. © YAYOI KUSAMA

Installation view, KUSAMA: Cosmic Nature, The New York Botanical Garden, 2021

Kusama’s most important motifs make reference to organic forms, like pumpkins, which she saw as a child on the seed-harvesting fields of a nursery owned by her family in the town of Matsumoto, Japan, where she grew up.

Kusama began to feature the pumpkin form in her early art studies, from the late 1940s and early 1950s. However, it was not until 1994 that she created her first large-scale pumpkin sculpture, Pumpkin (1994), an open-air public commission for the Benesse Art Site on Naoshima Island in Japan.

Yayoi Kusama, PUMPKIN, 2013 (detail)

The pumpkin form also appears in Kusama’s paintings, including the yellow-and-black pumpkin motif that became a prominent feature across her practice beginning in the early 1980s.

The present work depicts one of the artist’s characteristic dot-covered pumpkins, set against a background covered in its entirety with a thin net pattern, fusing two of her most iconic designs: the pumpkin and the infinity net.

Yayoi Kusama

PUMPKIN, 2013

Acrylic on canvas

51 3/8 x 51 3/8 inches (130.3 x 130.3 cm)

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Portrait of Yayoi Kusama, 1958. Photo by Ken Van Sickle

Yayoi Kusama, Self-Portrait, 1950

Kusama’s immersive world of polka dots, nets, pumpkins, and glowing lights have created a worldwide sensation, while she herself has become an instantly recognizable figure.

In one of Kusama’s earliest self portraits, dating back to 1950, she fuses her own image with the surrounding environment, resulting in a dark-hued sunflower hovering over a woman’s pursed lips. Through this composition, Kusama portrays herself as a part of the expansive universe and infinite space.

Yayoi Kusama

SELF-PORTRAIT [BOTEFO], 2014

Acrylic on canvas

57 3/8 x 57 3/8 inches (145.5 x 145.5 cm)

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SELF-PORTRAIT [BOTEFO] (2014) features Kusama’s characteristic polka dots in varying sizes and colors, layered against an orange, purple, blue, and green background. It is among a small number of her self-portraits that exist.

Kusama is instantly recognizable with her signature red hair, blunt bangs, and red lips, and stands out amidst the patterned background while simultaneously blending into its interlocking patterns.

“Forget yourself. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment.”

—Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama, RESTING AT THE RIVERSIDE, 2014 (detail)

Kusama consistently expresses the notion that we are one with the environment and are but a piece of a much larger puzzle.

The present work, RESTING AT THE RIVERSIDE (2014) is part of Kusama’s series of My Eternal Soul paintings, begun in 2009. The work was included in her solo show at our gallery in New York in 2017, Festival of Life, presented concurrently with an exhibition titled Infinity Nets.

Yayoi Kusama

RESTING AT THE RIVERSIDE, 2014

Acrylic on canvas

76 3/8 x 76 3/8 inches (194 x 194 cm)

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The vibrant My Eternal Soul paintings are singular explorations of line and form, at once abstract and figurative.

Across her myriad of artistic practices, Kusama considers herself an instrument of her art, and her art as part of an infinite universe of endless patterns and possibilities.

“In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe.”

—Yayoi Kusama

Installation view, Yayoi Kusama's LOVE IS CALLING (2013), on view in Yayoi Kusama: I Who Have Arrived In Heaven, David Zwirner, New York, 2013; installation view, Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love, David Zwirner, New York, 2015; installation view, Yayoi Kusama: Festival of Life, David Zwirner, New York, 2017; installation view, Yayoi Kusama: EVERY DAY I PRAY FOR LOVE, David Zwirner, New York, 2019; installation view, Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers, David Zwirner, New York, 2023; installation view, Yayoi Kusama: Give Me Love, David Zwirner, New York, 2015; all © YAYOI KUSAMA

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