Pumpkin (1991)

Personal Reflection

It’s almost difficult to really see a Kusama pumpkin anymore. I knew it before I encountered it. Yellow, black dots, instantly recognisable. It has become an image reproduced on sculptures, posters, bags, exhibitions and endless Instagram feeds. But seeing the paintings up close made it strange again. The dots aren’t simply sitting on the pumpkin like decoration. They change size as they travel across its curves, making the pumpkin swell towards you and then disappear backwards. Around it, the background breaks into thousands of tiny cells. There is hardly any quiet space anywhere. And yet the pumpkin itself feels oddly calm. I think that’s what I like about knowing where this motif came from. Before it became one of the most recognisable images in contemporary art, it was simply something Kusama loved looking at as a child. She returned to it again and again, describing painting pumpkins almost as a meditative encounter. The two versions make that especially visible. The orange pumpkin feels warm, earthy and almost physical; the black-and-white one strips away the friendliness and turns the same object into something more graphic and hypnotic. Same pumpkin, completely different emotional temperature.