Yayoi KusamaYayoi Kusama - Small Dots
About the Item
- Creator:Yayoi Kusama (1929, Japanese)
- Dimensions:Height: 31.5 in (80 cm)Width: 7.88 in (20 cm)
- Medium:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Central, HK
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU2388214166442
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: Central, Hong Kong
- Return PolicyThis item cannot be returned.
- Charles and Ray Eames - Dot Pattern Skateboard Deck (Yellow)By Charles and Ray EamesLocated in Central, HKCharles and Ray Eames Dot Pattern Skateboard Deck, 2023 Maple wood. Raised-ink print of Dot Pattern on bottom with a dark maple veneer and archival print on top. 31 1/2 × 7 9/10 in ...Category
2010s Mixed Media
MaterialsWood, Maple
- Keith Haring - Child Chaise Chair, 2019By Keith HaringLocated in Central, HKOne of Keith Haring’s iconic and energetic figures that appeared in many of his paintings and sculptures during the 1980s is interpreted by French b...Category
2010s Mixed Media
MaterialsWood
- Yoshitomo Nara - Light Haze Days Skateboard Deck (Set of 3)By Yoshitomo NaraLocated in Central, HKYoshitomo Nara Light Haze Days Skateboard Deck Set, 2020 Silkscreen heat transfer on 100% FSC Canadian Maple Wood, produced in Europe 31 × 24 in 78.7 × 61 cmCategory
2010s Mixed Media
MaterialsWood, Maple
- Yoshitomo Nara - Welcome GirlBy Yoshitomo NaraLocated in Central, HKYoshitomo Nara Welcome Girl, 2017 Silkscreen print on 7-ply Canadian maple, hardwood skate deck. 31 1/2 × 8 in | 80 × 20.3 cmCategory
2010s Mixed Media
MaterialsWood
- Keith Haring - Man and Medusa, 2018By Keith HaringLocated in Central, HKKeith Haring Man and Medusa, 2018 Print on 7 ply Grade A Canadian Maple wood (Set of 4) 31 1/2 × 7 9/10 in 80 × 20 cm (each)Category
2010s Mixed Media
MaterialsWood
- Keith Haring - Free South Africa, 2022By Keith HaringLocated in Central, HKKeith Haring Free South Africa, 2022 Print on 7 ply Grade A Canadian Maple wood 31 1/2 × 7 9/10 in 80 × 20 cm (each)Category
2010s Mixed Media
MaterialsWood
- SometiemsBy Scott CampbellLocated in Zug, CHLaser drawing on painted wood panel.Category
21st Century and Contemporary Mixed Media
MaterialsWood, Laser Light
- Untitled, Collage abstract expressionistic wooden collage, monochrome blackBy Louise NevelsonLocated in Zug, CHNevelson’s compositions explore the relational possibilities of sculpture and space, summing up the objectification of the external world into a personal landscape. Although her prac...Category
20th Century Abstract Expressionist Mixed Media
MaterialsWood
- The Devil's MirrorLocated in Washington, DCA major work by Noche Crist (1909- 2004). Titled "The Devil's Mirror" and signed on reverse. The mirror in the center of the painting reflects a distorted ...Category
1980s Outsider Art Nude Paintings
MaterialsOil, Mirror, Plaster, Wood
- "de Margarita y Oscar, las cuata Rosa y Maria, y el motordel futuro" collageBy Claudio DicocheaLocated in Phoenix, AZClaudio Dicochea de Margarita y Oscar, las cuatas Rosa y Maria, y el motor del futuro (of Margarita and Oscar, the twins Rose and Mary, and the engine of survival), 2020 acrylic, graphite and transfer on wood 12" x 12" Born in San Luis Río Colorado, Mexico and raised on the Mexican/US border in southern Arizona, Claudio Dicochea works at the intersection of colonialism, art history and contemporary popular culture. Using the model of the 18th century genre of Casta paintings...Category
2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings
MaterialsWood, Acrylic, Graphite
- "Home Away From Home 3" repurposed wood wall hangingLocated in Phoenix, AZAto Ribeiro Home Away From Home 3, 2017 repurposed wood, wood glue 72" x 96" x 1.25" Ato Ribeiro works in a variety of media: sculpture, installation, drawing and printmaking. Bor...Category
2010s Contemporary Mixed Media
MaterialsWood
- Cajones Tipographicos VILocated in Miami, FLn/aCategory
2010s Contemporary Mixed Media
MaterialsWood, Paper