Playful Polka Dots — for Halloween and for Eyewear

Kusama-style dots adorn our decorative pumpkins

Who says pumpkins have to be scary, or even cute?  We’ve decided that pumpkins can be even more – an artistic statement.  So, we’ve decked out our office with polka dotted pumpkins inspired by Japanese avant-garde artist Yayoi Kusama.

A life-sized statue of Kusama serves as focal point for one of her sculptures in a Louis Vitton store window display in NYC.

Kusama’s love affair with polka dots is related to a condition she experienced starting in her early childhood, when she had hallucinations involving endless copies of a single image.  These images often took the form of flowers or dots and they were overwhelming.  So, she began to create images from dots – sort of like Picasso did in one of his phases. And this repetition of the single, perfectly round solid circle helped relieve her anxiety.  Her fans find her art unique and playful — so much so, that one of her paintings fetched $5.1 million on auction at Christies – a record for a living female artist.

But Kusama didn’t stop with images on canvas. She moved her art to the next level by taking it into the real world, painting live human models with her playful dots in wild fluorescent colors.

We spotted (okay, pun intended) this young woman sporting Louis Vitton-Kusama sunglasses glasses during New York Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in September.

What does Kusama have to do with eyewear and pumpkins?  Well, last summer, she partnered with Louis Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs to produce a new line of eyewear – featuring dots, of course.  And, among her many sculptures is a limited edition pumpkin that staggers the line between ugly and beautiful.Our pumpkins are more on the whimsical, playful side.  Come visit them for a treat – no tricks, we promise.