A valuable sculpture by renowned artist Yayoi Kusama was swept into the sea as Typhoon Lupit hit Japan. In a video posted to Twitter, the outdoor artwork appears to have sustained some damage with cracks in multiple places. The sculpture has since been recovered and is currently being held at the Benesse Art Site on the island.
In the past, the sculpture has been temporarily removed ahead of typhoons to avoid any damage, but the unexpected rapid intensity of Typhoon Lupit had caught the centre off-guard. It is currently being restored and the art centre told the publication it would announce when the work would be displayed again.
Pumpkin was installed at the site in 1994 and has become one of Naoshima Island’s art landmarks. It is one of Kusama’s largest pumpkin sculptures from that period measuring more than 2.4 meters wide.
In 2017, another sculpture in the UK by Kusama was damaged. A pumpkin displayed at the 2017 exhibition “Infinity Mirrored Room—All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., was damaged after a visitor to the show tripped on it while trying to take a selfie.
The yellow pumpkin sculptures represent a cornerstone of the artist’s practice. Kusama has been drawing pumpkins since elementary school. Two of Kusama’s pumpkin sculptures, one in yellow and one in red, both around 6 feet tall, have been installed on Naoshima Island since 1994. The works are also extremely valuable. Earlier this month, one pumpkin work was at the center of a fraudulent scheme by German socialite Angela Gulbenkian, in which she sold a pumpkin work to a buyer for $1.3 million but never delivered the sold work and pocketed the money for herself. Gulbenkian was recently jailed for theft.