Lot  229 Ravenel Autumn Auction 2023 Taipei

Ravenel Autumn Auction 2023 Taipei

Summer Days

Yayoi KUSAMA (Japanese, 1929)

2012

Acrylic on canvas

112 x 145.5 cm

Estimate

TWD 40,000,000-60,000,000

HKD 9,756,000-14,634,000

USD 1,250,800-1,876,200

CNY 9,132,000-13,699,000

Sold Price

TWD 55,200,000

HKD 13,697,270

USD 1,754,051

CNY 12,545,455


Signature

Signed on the reverse Yayoi KUSAMA, titled Summer Days in English and Japanese and dated 2012

PROVENANCE
Private collection, Asia
This lot is to be sold with a registration card issued by Yayoi Kusama Studio.

+ OVERVIEW

She created a type of form. With a white overlap like mycelium that is consistent throughout and keeps proliferating, consciousness is enclosed. That is art with a level of self-discipline, which uses unobstructed matter to present a transcendent reality. With an astounding method, this wonderful and beautiful image is vividly imprinted into our sensory organs. - Herbert Read, Mugen no Ami: Yayoi Kusama Jiden Her pumpkins, her dots, her lines, and her self dissolution have become familiar symbols to the public. “Polka dots” are the main element in Yayoi Kusama’s creations and also an important symbol of the hippie era. In the 1960s’hippie, sexual liberation and anti-war, Yayoi Kusama was active in the international art scene. She was known as the “Polka Dot Queen”, “Hippie Queen” or “Avant-Garde Queen”. She was equally popular and influential as Pop art master Andy Warhol. With decades of continuous creative career and an unswerving attitude towards art, she has the reputation of being a national treasure artist in Japan and has been named as one of the top 100 important artists in the world. Yayoi Kusama’s creations are scattered all over the world. Last year, her cross-border collaboration with Louis Vuitton caused a sensation both in the fashion and art worlds. There were large-scale installations in Tokyo, Paris and New York, leading her infinite dots and net patterns once again become subject of atalk. These self- dissolution creations originate from the hallucinations that Yayoi Kusama has had since childhood: exactly because of the fear of dots that spread in her hallucinations, she throws herself in artistic creations equally endless as her hallucinations, trying to seek for relief from them. When Yayoi Kusama’s self-dissolving dots fully fill up the object and space, then the object seems to be dissolved among the space, finally the boundaries of the object, space, world and dots no longer seem to be clear. This piece “Summer Day” created by Yayoi Kusama in 2012 is her memory of midsummer. The classic yellow and black colors make up the entire work. If yellow is metaphorical to the sunshine in the midsummer, then the infinite polka dots on the black background definitely compare as the pumpkin fields blooming under the scorching sunshine in hot summer, just as her childhood memories. The cascading and delicate composition not only brings a multi-layered visual experience to the picture, but its repeatedly overlapping origins are even more dizzying. Her creations are full of deep thoughts about life and the universe, expressing her exploration of infinity and existence. These themes are closely related to the changes in nature and seasons. At the moment when this thought arises in the audience’s mind, it will then feel like returning to the time of being exposed to the same hot sunshine with the artist as the summer of that year.
Related Info

Modern & Contemporary Art

Ravenel Autumn Auction 2023 Taipei

Sunday, December 3, 2023, 2:00pm