When Kusama was not invited to the 1966 Biennale di Venezia, the biannual cultural exhibition in Venice, Italy, she staged a response with the help of her friend, renowned Argentine-Italian painter Lucio Fontana.

Kusama set up a subversive and provocative performance and installation called Narcissus Garden (1966) next to the Italian pavilion on the exhibition site, which featured her in a gold kimono under a sign that read “Your Narcissism for Sale” and selling 1,500 mirrored orbs to viewers for US$2 apiece. The kimono was Kusama playing up her “otherness” as one of the few Asian women in the Western art world. Eventually the police were called to escort her off the premises

Don't Miss: Never-Before-Seen Images of Andy Warhol in Hong Kong Showcased in Joint Exhibition

Entirely covered in hand-sewn, stuffed, protruding “phalluses”, the chair in Kusama’s Accumulation No. 1 was certainly not made for comfort.

It is widely known the artist has never desired marriage or sexual relationships; this is attributed to a childhood memory of her mother telling her to spy on her father, who was having extramarital affairs. In this piece, the repetition of phallic objects is the artist’s way of confronting her fear of male genitalia, something that would become another recurring theme throughout her career.

Her provocative and humorous transformation of a seemingly ordinary domestic article shocked many critics at the time. Made in her New York city apartment, the work was exhibited in a group show at Green Gallery in 1962 alongside works by other renowned artists, including her friend Claes Oldenburg, who was known for large-scale replicas of everyday objects. Accumulation No. 1 reflected the artistic influences Kusama was exposed at the time and serves as a reminder that she and her contemporaries cross-influenced each other.

The pumpkins that have become emblematic and synonymous of Kusama’s style first made an appearance in her work in 1946, when she was a teenager living in post-Second World War Japan. Painted in the traditional Japanese Nihonga style, this early version was starkly different from the artist’s signature bold aesthetic that is readily recognisable and wildly popular today. The pumpkin motif then re-emerged in her sculptures in the 1970s.

Earlier this month, a brand-new Pumpkin sculpture was installed at the Bennesse Art site on Japan’s Naoshima Island after the original was swept away by Typhoon Lupit in August 2021. The new sculpture is said to come with a new attachment that makes it typhoon-resistant.

Kusama started painting her Infinity Nets after moving to New York in 1958. Here is another example of the artist coping with her anxiety through the process of repetition, or what she refers to as “self-obliteration”: a method she uses to obliterate her fears and ego.

In 2014, a work from this series sold for US$7.1 million, which made Kusama the highest-selling female artist alive at the time. Since her works started appearing at auctions, Kusama has accumulated a total turnover of US$889 million across 7,884 lots sold. 

Now Read:

Alexander Calder’s Famous Sculptures Are Being Transformed Into NFTs

11 Art Exhibitions Not to Be Missed in October

As M+ Exhibits a Retrospective of Yayoi Kusama, China Guardian (HK)’s Autumn Auctions Present Eight of Her Significant Works