If Minnie Mouse followed Alice down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, these would be the perfect shoes for her trip. Even the Queen of Hearts would be envious.
In reality, High Heels for Going to Heaven at San Francisco Airport (SFO) demonstrates the pop art and utopian styles that Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama is famous for around the world. Many of her creative trademarks—grand scale, minimalism, repeating shapes and the color red—are immediately apparent in the painted plastic sculpture displayed post-security in Harvey Milk Terminal 1.
Throughout her long career, Kusama (now 96 and reportedly still painting, sculpting and writing) was known for breaking down barriers between fine art and the general public. Many of her works feature polka dots—a visual element she began experimenting with as early as age 10. As an adult, she indicated that childhood hallucinations inspired the recurring motif. “A polka dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm,” she later elaborated. “Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity.”
Kusama’s freestanding polka dotted sculpture at SFO originally appeared in an old part of Terminal 1, but was relocated to a newer section last spring. Her earlier sculpture of a single high-heeled shoe is on display at the Kirishima Open-Air Museum in Japan.
High Heels for Going to Heaven is one of nearly 190 pieces of art at SFO. The airport’s collection is among the most valuable in San Francisco, a city brimming with museums and galleries.
