In the manner of Yayoi Kusama
Japanese, b. 1929
Scooter, 2026
Acrylic on canvas
162 × 162 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.23.1
An electric scooter stands on a yellow ground covered in black dots, and it is covered in black dots itself, so that it only just holds its shape. The dots on the floor are big and the dots on the wall small, which is the only way you know where one ends. Kusama has dotted pumpkins for most of her life. The scooter is the pumpkin of the pavement: everywhere, and faintly absurd.
The brief
An electric kick scooter covered entirely in black dots on yellow against a yellow ground of larger dots, almost dissolving. Contemporary painting of obsessive repeated dots and nets, dense polka dots in graduated sizes covering every surface, red on white, yellow on black, undulating net patterns, hallucinatory flatness, the object dissolving into pattern, thick even acrylic with hand-painted irregularity. Museum photograph of the acrylic painting, flat even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
