During a Sotheby’s evening sale in Hong Kong, a group of five works by Yayoi Kusama sold for $22.9 million, with some of the artist’s highest auction prices ever achieved within the last 20 years. Kusama was among the biggest names anchoring two back-to-back sales of modern and contemporary art, which by the day’s end generated HKD $1.52 billion ($192.8 million) and 11 new artist records.
One of Kusama’s sculptures, Pumpkin (L), an oversized bronze pumpkin produced in 2014, sold for HKD $62.64 million ($7.98 million), setting a new benchmark for a sculpture by the Japanese artist. Another work that captured bidding attention was Kusama’s 2018 piece My Heart is Flying to the Universe, a mirrored box with LED lighting and a face-sized hole cut into its exterior through which viewers can peer in. Although viewers cannot fully enter the piece, the work sold well for HKD $25.9 million ($3.29 million). The piece came from an anonymous seller who originally purchased it from David Zwirner.
The high prices for Yayoi Kusama’s work sold during the auction paint a clearer picture of the Hong Kong market’s current state than the data from the 2022 edition of the UBS Art Basel Report, which was released earlier this week. The market in Asia has been ailing, with China’s strength hindered by a protracted period of restrictive Covid policies that only just recently loosened. Sales in the region were down 14 percent, at $11.2 billion, its lowest figure since 2009.
Yayoi Kusama, now 94, has reached a new level of popularity on the market. In 2020, writer Greg Allen likened her cult status to something like a “Kusama-industrial-complex” within the gallery and museum world. She is currently the subject of a retrospective at the M+ museum and a widely publicized campaign by Louis Vuitton. Kusama’s current auction record is $10.9 million, set by an “Infinity Nets” painting sold in 2022 at Phillips.