About the Artwork
Kusama is one of Japan's best known living artists. Early in her career, Kusama moved to New York, over the objections of her family. There she quickly established herself in the mid-century avant-garde art scene, working in a broad range of mediums including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and performance art. This installation belongs to a series of works begun in 1962 in which she takes everyday objects, such as shoes, furniture, suitcases, and kitchen equipment, and transforms them into something strange by covering them with phallic forms that are hand sewn, stuffed with cotton, and patined. While Kusama has said that she uses this practice to come to terms with her sexual fears, the sculpture is also a humorous commentary on the art world. Her work is characterized by repetition, pattern, and obsession, and this form has been used as a recurrent vocabulary throughout her fifty-year career.
From Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 89 (2015)
Silver Shoes
between 1976 and 1977
Yayoi Kusama
born 1929
American
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Shoes, cotton, and paint
Storage: 9 3/4 × 48 × 22 1/2 inches (24.8 × 121.9 × 57.2 cm)
Sculpture
Contemporary Art after 1950
Founders Society Purchase, W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, with funds from the Friends of Modern Art
2000.46
Copyright Not Evaluated
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Provenance
2000-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)For more information on provenance, please visit:
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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.
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Bulletin of the DIA 89, no. 1/4 (2015): p. 6 (ill.).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
Yayoi Kusama, Silver Shoes, between 1976 and 1977, shoes, cotton, and paint. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, with funds from the Friends of Modern Art, 2000.46.
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