Jeff Koons: Art, Desire, and the Commodity
- Sfumato Art Creatives
- 6 hours ago
- 1 min read
Jeff Koons
b. 1955 | American | Sculpture; Conceptual Art; Oils; Photography
Koons is good-looking, clever, witty, articulate, popular, good at self-publicity, and successful. A former salesman and Wall Street commodity broker, he is now one of the darlings of the contemporary art world. He is married to La Cicciolina (a famous Italian porn star and politician).
He glorifies and deifies the banal consumer object as a work of art. For instance, he presented pristine vacuum cleaners in the airtight, fluorescent-lit museum cases usually reserved for precious objects; he cast an inflatable toy rabbit as a polished sculpture like a Brancusi; he presented a kitsch life-size Michael Jackson model like a giant Meissen figurine; and he filmed himself and his wife making love in a sanitized, Disney-like setting. He has an obsession with newness.
His work displays layers of clever, deliberate symbolism: the pristine vacuum cleaner = phallic (male) + sucking (female) + cleaning (purity or goodness) + brand new (virginity and immortality). He comments on consumer society’s relentless promotion of success and the luxury lifestyle—and also how the art market functions, since commodities can be turned into high art, and art into commodities.
The sculpture was made at the high point of the singer’s career. Bubbles was his domestic pet.
Key Works:Lifeboat, 1985 (Hamburg: Kunsthalle);Three Balls Total Equilibrium Tank, 1985 (London: Tate Collection);Pink Panther, 1988 (New York: Sonnabend Gallery);Blue Poles, 2000 (New York: Guggenheim Museum)
Comments