It’s a thrill to discover an artist, writer, or musician for the first time. Yayoi Kusama is a 95-year-old Japanese artist whose installations I experienced at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Throughout a career lasting decades, she has harbored a fascination with polka dots and pumpkins. I can see why those shapes inspire a visual artist.
This mirror room with polka dots creates illusions of infinite space. We got to stand inside by ourselves for two wonderous minutes, which passed in a blink, because you get absorbed staring into infinity. Kusama says polka dots help ground herself in the cosmos.
This one is called Aspiring to Pumpkin’s Love, the Love in My Heart
“I love pumpkins,” Kusama once said in an interview, “because of their humorous form, warm feeling, and a human-like quality and form. My desire to create works of pumpkins still continues. I have enthusiasm as if I were still a child.”
What could be better than still having a child’s enthusiasm—and over a pumpkin! Side note: we have a loving orange cat named Pumpkin.
