Yayoi Kusama's Pumpkin YB-D (2004) features the gourd in yellow against a deep black ground — a wider, lower form than other works in the series, the pumpkin occupying the full width of the image with a squat, grounded presence. The black dots covering the form graduate from small, densely packed marks along the ribs to large bold circles at the broadest sections, the pattern describing the volume of the gourd whilst activating its entire expanse. The cell-like ground in the background — angular, interlocking, extending to every edge — is rendered in yellow on black, the same colours as the pumpkin but inverted, so the background and the form are built from identical elements arranged in opposite order.

Kusama grew up in Matsumoto, in the Japanese Alps, where her family ran a plant nursery and seed merchant business. The pumpkin appeared early in her work as a stabilising presence — she has described it as possessing a "generous unpretentiousness" that she found grounding during a childhood marked by hallucinations and psychological distress. Where her Infinity Net paintings of the late 1950s extended pattern without boundary or anchor, the pumpkin gave it a container, a form the pattern could inhabit without losing its coherence.

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