Pumpkin (M)

A pumpkin the size of a man's head

Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929, in Matsumoto, in Nagano Prefecture, into a family of merchants who ran a plant nursery and seed farm. She later recalled the moment the subject of this sculpture entered her life. On a visit to a large seed-harvesting ground with her grandfather she saw 'a pumpkin the size of a man's head,' and it 'immediately began speaking to me in a most animated manner.' Pumpkins, she wrote, 'do not inspire much respect. But I was enchanted by their charming and winsome form.'

From around the age of 10 she experienced hallucinations of dots, flowers, pumpkins and patterned fabric that seemed to come alive, speak to her and envelop her. She called the experience 'self-obliteration,' and the repeated dots and nets that fill her work grew out of it. Among those visions the pumpkin was the comforting one. 'Pumpkins have been a great comfort to me since my childhood,' she said. 'They speak to me of the joy of living.'

Her first pumpkins date from the 1940s, when she trained in the traditional Japanese painting style called nihonga in Kyoto; an early still life, Onions, is dated 1948. The motif stayed with her for the next seven decades, through paintings, prints, room-sized installations, colossal outdoor sculptures and, from the 2010s, bronze.

From New York happenings to a studio beside a Tokyo hospital

Kusama left Japan at 27, calling its society 'too small, too servile, too feudalistic, and too scornful of women.' She spent a year in Seattle from 1957 and arrived in New York in 1958, where she made Infinity Net paintings and soft sculptures and staged happenings in which naked participants were painted with polka dots. At the 1966 Venice Biennale she laid out Narcissus Garden, 1,500 mirrored plastic spheres on a lawn, and began selling them for 1,200 lire (about $2) each until the organizers stopped her.

She returned to Japan in 1973 to an unsympathetic reception. In 1977 she checked herself into Seiwa Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Tokyo's Shinjuku district, and lived there by choice for the rest of her life, working in a studio a short distance away. She is often quoted as saying that if it were not for art, she would have killed herself long before.

The pumpkin brought her back to the world stage. In 1993 she became the first woman artist invited to represent the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and she filled it with a mirrored room of yellow and black dotted pumpkins, over which she presided in color-coordinated magician's attire. In 1994 a 2.5-meter fiberglass Pumpkin was installed on a pier on the island of Naoshima. It became her best-known outdoor work; a typhoon destroyed it in 2021, and it was reinstalled in 2022.

Kusama died at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14, 2026, at the age of 97.

London, 2016

Pumpkin (M) was made for an exhibition of new work that opened across a London gallery's three spaces on May 25, 2016, and ran until July 30. It included three new mirror rooms, among them All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, new Infinity Net and My Eternal Soul paintings, and, in the waterside garden, a version of Narcissus Garden made of 873 stainless steel spheres.

Three new mirror-polished bronze pumpkins stood together, listed in the exhibition's walking guide as one work in three sizes: S at 68 cm, M at 105 cm and L at 152 cm tall. A newspaper preview described them as 'impressed with patterns of black circles within their mirror-polished surfaces,' standing 'sentry' outside the pumpkin mirror room. A later catalog calls the polished pumpkins of that year among the first of their kind that Kusama made.

Kusama was 87. The same preview noted that her 2014 shows in Brazil had drawn the highest attendance figures of any exhibitions that year. Less than a month after the London show opened, Britain voted to leave the European Union.

How to know it

Pumpkin (M) is a free-standing bronze, polished to a mirror finish, with rows of black dots impressed into the surface. The dots are largest along the middle of each lobe and shrink toward the top and bottom of the gourd and into its creases. Because the surface is a mirror, each cast reflects the room it stands in.

It was issued in an edition of 8 plus 2 artist's proofs. The casts that have appeared at auction are incised with the signature 'Yayoi Kusama' on the lower part and are accompanied by a registration card issued by the artist's studio. Auction catalogs list the casts shown in the 2016 exhibition and in several museum loans as 'edition no. unknown,' so it is not always clear which cast was where.

The published measurements do not agree. The 2016 gallery list, a 2023 sale catalog and a 2023 gallery offering give about 105 x 90 x 90 cm (41 3/8 x 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 inches); the 2024 London catalog for edition 7 gives 100.2 x 80.2 x 77.5 cm (39 1/2 x 31 5/8 x 30 1/2 inches). The sources reviewed do not explain the difference. One 2023 gallery listing also describes the materials as mirror-polished bronze, dye and acrylic lacquer.

Do not confuse it with a different, much larger work of the same title. Kusama's 2014 Pumpkin (M) is a two-color bronze about 187 x 182 x 182 cm, shown in a London exhibition of bronze pumpkins from September to December 2014. Edition 8 of that sculpture sold for $6,529,100 at auction in New York on November 16, 2022. That figure belongs to the 2014 work, not to this mirror-polished one.

Where the casts have gone

After the 2016 London show, examples went on view in some of Kusama's most important exhibitions of the following years: on loan at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide from December 2019; in Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, November 2021 to May 2022; and at the PHI Foundation in Quebec in Dancing Lights That Flew Up to the Universe, July 2022 to January 2023. An edition is in the collection of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and an example was the subject of a curator's talk in a nature-themed collection display at the National Gallery of Australia, on view until August 3, 2025.

Edition 6 had been bought from a Tokyo gallery that represents Kusama. It was offered at auction in Hong Kong on October 5, 2023, with an estimate of HK$24 million to HK$40 million, and its catalog called it the largest of the polished series to have been offered at auction. It sold for HK$22,230,000, about $2.84 million, below the low estimate.

Edition 7, from a private European collection, was offered in London on October 10, 2024, estimated at £2 million to £3 million. It sold for £1,984,000, reported at $2,594,080, the second-highest price of the evening and again below the low estimate. Market reporters described that week's London sales as subdued, with around half of all lots selling at or below their low estimates.

That same year Kusama unveiled her tallest bronze pumpkin, a 6-meter Pumpkin installed beside the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, London, from July 9 to November 3, 2024.

The numbers

Medium

Mirror-polished bronze

Dimensions

About 105 x 90 x 90 cm (41 3/8 x 35 3/8 x 35 3/8 in) per the 2016 exhibition list and a 2023 catalog; 100.2 x 80.2 x 77.5 cm per the 2024 catalog for edition 7

Edition

8 plus 2 artist's proofs

Catalogue raisonné

No number stated in the sources reviewed

Public collection

Tel Aviv Museum of Art holds an edition

Timeline

1. Mar 22, 1929

   Yayoi Kusama is born in Matsumoto, Nagano, into a family that runs a plant nursery and seed farm.

2. 1948

   Kusama studies nihonga painting in Kyoto; her early still life Onions dates from this year.

3. 1958

   After a year in Seattle, Kusama arrives in New York.

4. 1966

   At the Venice Biennale she sells mirrored spheres from Narcissus Garden for about $2 each until organizers stop her.

5. 1977

   Kusama takes up residence at Seiwa Hospital in Tokyo, working in a studio nearby.

6. 1993

   She represents Japan at the Venice Biennale with a mirrored pumpkin room.

7. 1994

   Her yellow fiberglass Pumpkin is installed on a pier on Naoshima.

8. 2014

   A London exhibition of bronze pumpkins includes a 187 cm Pumpkin (M), a separate edition from this one.

9. May 25, 2016

   Three new mirror-polished bronze pumpkins, in sizes S, M and L, go on view in a London exhibition that runs until July 30.

10. Dec 2019

    An example of Pumpkin (M) goes on loan to the Art Gallery of South Australia.

11. Nov 2021

    An example appears in Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, through May 2022.

12. Jul 2022

    An example is shown at the PHI Foundation in Quebec, through January 2023.

13. Oct 5, 2023

    Edition 6 sells at auction in Hong Kong for HK$22,230,000, about $2.84 million.

14. Jul 9, 2024

    Kusama's tallest bronze pumpkin, 6 meters high, is unveiled in Kensington Gardens, London.

15. Oct 10, 2024

    Edition 7 sells at auction in London for £1,984,000, reported at $2,594,080.

16. Aug 14, 2026

    Yayoi Kusama dies in Tokyo at 97.

The world in 2016

• Jan 28, 2016

  The World Health Organization announces an outbreak of the Zika virus.

• Jun 23, 2016

  The United Kingdom votes in a referendum to leave the European Union, while the London show is on view.

• Jul 6, 2016

  The augmented reality game Pokemon Go is released and breaks sales and revenue records.

• Aug 5, 2016

  The Summer Olympics open in Rio de Janeiro, the first Games held in South America.

• Sep 3, 2016

  The United States and China formally join the Paris climate agreement.

• Nov 8, 2016

  Donald Trump is elected president of the United States.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Pumpkin (M) is number 25 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (25 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Kusama said she first saw a pumpkin 'the size of a man's head' on a visit to a seed-harvesting ground with her grandfather, and that it began talking to her.
• In 1966 she sold mirrored spheres outside the Venice Biennale for 1,200 lire, about $2, each, until the organizers made her stop.
• Kusama lived by choice in a Tokyo psychiatric hospital from 1977 and worked in a studio a short distance away.
• The 2016 bronze pumpkins came in three sizes, S, M and L, shown side by side in London.
• A different, two-color 2014 bronze shares the title Pumpkin (M); it is nearly twice as tall and sold for $6,529,100 in 2022.
• Her original Naoshima pumpkin was destroyed by a typhoon in 2021 and reinstalled the next year.