For Yayoi Kusama, pumpkins have been a lifelong source of fascination. She was first drawn to them in childhood, citing their \u201cgenerous unpretentiousness\u201d and \u201cspiritual balance,\u201d and has explored them continually in her painting, sculpture, installation art, and poetry. They first appeared in her work in the 1940s and have been the subject of some of the most important works of her career. Today, polka-dotted pumpkins are synonymous with the artist and her idiosyncratic style. <\/p>\n
Aspiring to Pumpkin\u2019s Love, the Love in My Heart<\/i> is among her most recent such sculptures. In it, Kusama pushes the polka-dotted pumpkin to new extremes. For her, polka dots represent self-obliteration \u2014 not in a destructive sense, but as a means of merging the individual with the larger universe. As we navigate the sculpture\u2019s massive five-stem form and undulating walls, we are invited to share in the artist\u2019s admiration for this symbol which embodies peace and joy.
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Header image: Yayoi Kusama, Aspiring to Pumpkin\u2019s Love, the Love in My Heart<\/i>, 2023, (installation view, SFMOMA); collection Fisher Art Foundation; \u00a9 YAYOI KUSAMA, courtesy the artist, Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner; photos: Don Ross<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Yayoi Kusama, pumpkins have been a lifelong source of fascination. She was first drawn to them in childhood, citing their \u201cgenerous unpretentiousness\u201d and \u201cspiritual balance,\u201d and has explored them continually in her painting, sculpture, installation art, and poetry. They first appeared in her work in the 1940s and have been the subject of some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":625290,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":"","_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"department":[5],"class_list":["post-603682","exhibition","type-exhibition","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","department-painting-and-sculpture","theme-installations-and-special-projects","wpautop"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition\/603682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exhibition"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exhibition\/603682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfmoma.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=603682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}