  
  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)
  
  
  Title
  Silver Shoes
  
  
  Artwork Date
  between 1976 and 1977
  
  Artist
  Yayoi Kusama
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  born 1929
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
  ----------
  
  
  Medium
  Shoes, cotton, and paint
  
  
  Dimensions
  Storage: 9 3/4 &Atilde;&#151; 48 &Atilde;&#151; 22 1/2 inches (24.8 &Atilde;&#151; 121.9 &Atilde;&#151; 57.2 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Sculpture
  
  
  Department
  Contemporary Art after 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, W. Hawkins Ferry Fund, with funds from the Friends of Modern Art
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum&acirc;&#128;&#153;s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems&acirc;&#128;&#148;no longer assigned&acirc;&#128;&#148;that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  2000.46
  
  
  Copyright
  Copyright Not Evaluated
  
  
  
