In the manner of Yayoi Kusama
Japanese, b. 1929
Sneakers, 2026
Acrylic on canvas
162 × 162 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.23.3
A pair of chunky white trainers, covered in red dots that shrink as they climb towards the laces, standing on a floor and against a wall covered in bigger red dots. The shoes have nearly disappeared and are still, somehow, very expensive. Kusama has dotted handbags, shoes and whole shopfronts in her time. She knows exactly how much a dot adds to the price. She is not telling.
The brief
A pair of chunky white sneakers covered in graduated red dots on a red dotted ground. 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.
