Yayoi Kusama // Heart, 2001

  • Yayoi Kusama, Heart, 2001. Acrylic on canvas, 18.5 × 14.5 cm. A small painting in which Kusama reimagines a universal symbol through her obsessive patterns and visual language of infinity.
    Heart, 2001
    Acrylic on canvas, 18.5 × 14.5 cm (7.3 × 5.7 in.)
    © Yayoi Kusama. Image reproduced for educational and informational purposes only. 
    Back to Yayoi Kusama Originals page
     
    Painted in 2001, Heart reflects Kusama’s ability to transform simple and familiar motifs into charged symbols of obsession, repetition, and psychological resonance. The heart, a universal emblem of love and human emotion, becomes in her hands both playful and intense. Through acrylic patterning, the motif is stripped of sentimentality and reimagined as part of her broader visual language of dots, nets, and organic forms.
     
    The intimate scale of the work invites close engagement, allowing the viewer to see the painstaking repetition that underpins Kusama’s practice. At the same time, the choice of subject highlights her capacity to merge personal vision with imagery that resonates across cultures. Like her pumpkins, flowers, and dots, the heart here serves as a bridge between Kusama’s private obsessions and universally recognisable forms.

  • "Polka dots are a way to infinity.” 

    – Yayoi Kusama

    By the early 2000s, Kusama was firmly established as an international icon, her work embraced by museums, collectors, and a broad global audience. Works such as Heart illustrate how even small canvases carried the full force of her mature practice, proving that scale was never a limitation to impact. The concentrated surface of this painting distils the same psychological intensity found in her larger works, combining meticulous repetition with a universally recognisable motif. At the same time, the subject of the heart underscores her ability to engage audiences across cultural boundaries, uniting personal obsessions with imagery that resonates on a global stage.