1: Portrait of a Pumpkin
2: Sorry Cinderella - It Looks Like You're Gonna Be Walking Home
Stephen Alexander (2024)
Last week, on a freezing cold day, I paid a visit to the Shapero Gallery on Bond Street, in London's Mayfair, to see the Modern Muse exhibition, featuring works by various twentieth and twenty-first century artists [1].
Prints by all the usual suspects were included - Picasso, Warhol, Hockney, and (groan) Banksy - but there were also works by artists with whom I'm rather less familiar, such as Yayoi Kusama, whose black and white pumpkin I particularly appreciated [2].
For whilst traditionally a muse is conceived as an inspirational female figure, either mortal or divine, that seems a bit narrow and I think and we should open up the concept to include animals, plants, and even inanimate objects.
After all, we're not ancient Greeks. And there's really no need to personify and feminise those forces and desires that fire the human imagination.
Surely, like Kusama, we can all find inspiration in a piece of winter squash and a rotting vegetable might serve as a muse just as easily as Venus rising from the waves, or the lovely face of Kate Moss.
The genre distinction between portraiture and still life is, I think, essentially untenable. Leonardo da Vinci's Head of a Young Girl (1506-08) is really no different from the visual representation of a head of cabbage - perhaps that's what Claude Lalanne was trying to tell us all along [3].
And so, with all this in mind, I thought I'd follow Kusama's lead and turn to the humble pumpkin as muse - the above pictures being the result. The first, is a simple portrait; whilst the second, a rather more violent and complex image, deals with themes of death, decay, and disappointment.
Notes
[1] For more information on the Shapero Gallery, please click here. For details of The Modern Muse exhibition in particular, click here.
[2] The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama - now in her 96th year and still going strong - has had a lifelong fascination with pumpkins and has elevated everybody's favourite squash (and organic Halloween prop) to iconic status in her art. As one critic writes:
"Equally rooted in personal memories
and universal themes, her pumpkins rival the recognisability of Warhol's
Soup Cans. Whether capturing the essence of infinity with her intricate
net patterns or playing with a kaleidoscope of colours, Kusama's
Pumpkins offer a visual feast that resonates globally."
See Essie King's article, '10 Facts About Yayoi
Kusama's Pumpkins', on myartbroker.com (8 Dec 2023): click here.
[3] In 1968, Lalanne produced an ambitious sculpture entitled L'Homme à la tête de chou, combining human and vegetable. Serge Gainsbourg famously purchased the piece and it inspired his 1976 concept album of the same title. Lalanne produced a second version of the work in 2005, which was donated (in lieu of inheritance tax) to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2021.
Readers who are interested in knowing more on Lalanne, Gainsbourg, and the man with the cabbage head might like to see my post of 16 June 2023: click here.
