Known for her avant-garde work (she’s been dubbed the “Princess of Polka Dots”), Yayoi Kusama is a celebrated Japanese contemporary artist, perhaps best known for her kaleidoscopic installations and larger-than-life sculptures.
In a partnership with Veuve Clicquot to mark the house’s newest vintage, La Grande Dame 2012, Kusama has created a limited-edition gift box of the champagne that features her signature polka dots as well as a whimsical floral sculpture. The piece, titled My Heart That Blooms in the Darkness of Night, was custom made to wrap around the magnum bottle. A tribute to nature, the playful sculpture has ornate, blooming flowers and tentacle-esque leaves, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy.
See also: The Veuve Clicquot Champagne Bucket Designed by Baccarat]
Yayoi Kusama is one of the world’s most celebrated contemporary artists
It took over 250 hours to create, and only 100 are available — and only by request. The vintage itself has been created in honor of Madame Clicquot, a trailblazer who stormed the industry with her bold moves as a female entrepreneur in the early 1800s. Despite the two visionary women being separated by over 150 years, this is not the first time they have collaborated: In 2006, Kusama reimagined a portrait of Clicquot using her iconic polka dots for a charity auction in Tokyo.
“One day, after gazing at a pattern of red flowers on the tablecloth, I looked up to see that the ceiling, the windows and the columns seemed to be plastered with the same red floral pattern. I saw the entire room, my entire body and the entire universe covered with red flowers, and in that instant my soul was obliterated and I was restored, returned to infinity, to eternal time and absolute space. This was not an illusion but reality itself.” – Yayoi Kusama
La Grande Dame 2012 $195, sculpture $30,000, veuveclicquot.com
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