Yayoi Kusama · 1994
Yellow Pumpkin
Yayoi Kusama
Yellow Pumpkin
1994
Yayoi Kusama's 'Yellow Pumpkin' (1994) is the famous outdoor sculpture installed at the end of a concrete pier on Naoshima Island in the Seto Inland Sea, part of the Benesse Art Site. Standing two metres high and covered in the artist's signature black polka-dot pattern, the bright-yellow fibre-reinforced plastic gourd quickly became the most photographed work of Japanese contemporary art. The pumpkin was washed away by Typhoon Lupit in 2021 and reinstalled in 2022 in a slightly redesigned, more storm-resistant version; for the artist, the pumpkin has been a lifelong personal emblem of childhood, accumulation, and 'infinite self-obliteration'.
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Image source: Wikimedia Commons