You Don't Have to Be Yayoi Kusama to Make Pumpkin Art

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. 

On the Triumphant Return of Small Breasts

Good news for those who have an erotico-aesthetic preference for women with small, pert breasts and are troubled by tits grotesquely inflated with silicone which have dominated the cultural imagination for decades - there's been a sharp decline in the number of young women consenting to cosmetic surgery and conforming to an ugly porno-plastic ideal.

In fact, figures from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons reveal a 20% fall in numbers of women having breast augmentation in 2015 compared to the year before. Even Jordan, the unofficial poster girl of implants, is downsizing and opting for a vaguely more natural look (in the hope, apparently, that she’ll be taken more seriously).

The era of boob-jobs is, seemingly, coming to an end. And this is, I think, a good thing - even if the cause is (from a feminist perspective) a little disappointing. For whilst one would like to believe it demonstrates increased female confidence - the realisation that self-esteem should rest on more than bra size and one’s attractiveness to men - it’s probably just a generational and a fashion thing; younger women no longer find it desirable or stylish to resemble a transsexual caricature of womanhood, instead they admire and want to look like those ‘A’ List celebrities who are also ‘A’ cup sized.

It's the triumph, we might say, of Kate Moss over Katie Price. Or, as the editors of numerous women's magazines would have it: small boobs rock! and bee-stung beauties are the hottest girls in the world right now.

Lady Chatterley's Body

Photo of Kate Moss by Tim Walker for
Love Magazine, issue 9 (S/S, 2013)

According to a recent tweet from Lawrence scholar Catherine Brown, Wetherspoon's are opening a new pub in Eastwood to be called The Lady Chatterley Arms. I've no objection to this, but think it ironic that the pub is to be named after the one part of her anatomy that Lawrence didn't detail (or fetishize) in his descriptions of Connie. 

We know, for example, she had a ruddy complexion, with soft brown hair, big blue eyes (often full of tears) and a slow, soft voice with an underlying wilfulness. We know too she was golden-skinned and if her navel was rather withdrawn and sad-looking, nevertheless her waist retained its flexibility and her loins their voluptuous curve. 

We also know that whilst Connie wasn't tall and had a somewhat stocky build, she nevertheless had a good figure: she wasn't fat, as Lawrence non-too-subtly puts it. That said, neither was her physique quite fashionable. 

Further, despite having a certain fluid proportion, her body had somehow failed to ripen; her breasts were rather small and drooping pear-shaped, her belly somewhat slack and meaningless. Her thighs, meanwhile, were heavy and inert, whilst her back, her hips and buttocks had lost their distinction and were no longer so gay-looking or sensitive in outline as in her Dresden days (i.e. before her marriage to Clifford).

Nevertheless, these were still the parts of her that seemed most alive; the beautiful, long-sloping hips and the buttocks with their round, heavy contour so full of female energy. It was just the front of her body that made her feel miserable, as it seemed to be making the leap straight from girlhood to old age, without ever knowing its mature perfection. Depressed by this realisation, Connie dramatically loses her appetite and briefly becomes as thin as a rail, with dark shadows under her eyes.

Her affair with Mellors, however, restores her body to its full health and vitality. For he finds her body lovely to touch and to marvel at and this makes her feel beautiful and desirable. Her thighs and belly and hips all perk up and she feels a sort of dawn come into her flesh; even her breasts begin to tip and to stir once more.

Mellors particularly likes her soft, golden-brown pubic hair (in which he ties forget-me-nots) and her silky inner-thighs. And, if he is to be believed, not only does she have the nicest of all arses, but she's also the best bit o' cunt left on earth. 

We know then a good deal about Lady Chatterley's body - perhaps even more than we know about her character. But, as I said earlier, we know nothing about her arms ...