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BIg Edgy Co ntrad iction
Je ff K oo n s
S I Z E DO ES MATTER
matt
doe
Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
Jef f K o o ns Bi g Edg y C o n t radi cti on
Lib er a t io n , Acce p tan ce a n d Em br a cing t he m ai n s tre am
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
“ I try to be a truthful arti
I try to show a level of co I’m a messenger.”
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
ist and
ourage.
Jef f K o o ns Bi g Edg y C o n t radi cti on
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Jef f K o o ns Bi g Edg y C o n t radi cti on
Bio Name : Jeff Koons Age / Sex / Nationality : 48/m/York About : Jeff Koons made a name for himself by using everyday objects in special installations that touched on consumerism and the human experience. Some of his art work has consisted of overtly sexual while others have been seen as a form of neo-kitsch, such as his balloon dogs.
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“The intuitive quality of my work precludes all need for deception. ”
Ove r v i ew Jeff Koons was born in 1955 in York, Pennsylvania. He developed a talent for drawing and painting from an early age and his father, an interior designer and decorator, exhibited his son’s work in the showroom of his decorating business. It was from his father that Koons would develop aesthetic appreciation and his understanding of how colours, objects and spaces could affect peoples’ emotions. Koons went on to study at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Having received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976, he moved to New York in 1977 and began working at the membership desk of the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York). He quickly became known for his impressive salesmanship and it was during this period that he first began to work with inflatable flowers and rabbits, combining them with acrylic and mirrors to produce striking sculptures.
In 1979, Koons left the museum and began to work as a Wall Street commodities broker to fund his work. His breakthrough series The New 1980–87 was made up of vacuum cleaners and shampoo polishers displayed in clear acrylic vitrines. Themes of mortality, commerce and contemporary society are prevalent in the works. Koons’ Equilibrium series 1983-1993 included sculptures comprised of basketballs floating in tanks of water. In 1986, he appeared in a group show at Sonnabend Gallery in New York; the cool style of the works in the show led critics to declare a shift away from the neo-expressionism that had dominated the earlier half of the decade. In his Banality series 1988 he produced sculptural pairings such as the pop singer Michael Jackson and his pet chimpanzee (in Michael Jackson and Bubbles 1988). This series also included art magazine ads, starring Koons himself, which played on his newfound art-world celebrity. The
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
Jeff Koons Balloon flower (blue), high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating 340 x 285 x 260 cm
1980s were a time of excess with the decade often referred to as ‘the decade of greed’. Koons works played on such decadence.On the back of his successful Equilibrium, Luxury and Degradation 1986 and Banality series Koons had become something of a celebrity; he was now the highest paid artist of his generation and his fame reflected this.In his Made in Heaven series 1989–91, the artist and his new wife, adult film star and model Ilona Staller, appeared in a series of erotic poses, alongside a wide array of sculptures of flowers, of dogs and cherubs. In 1992, Koons’ forty-foot-high sculpture Puppy, a rendering of a West Highland terrier comprised of soil and living, multi-coloured flowers, was installed in Kassel during Documenta 9. Though not part of the official show, the sculpture was extremely popular and has since been displayed in other cities, including New York, Sydney, and Bilbao. In his work since the mid-1990s, in series such as Celebration
1994–, Easyfun 1999–2000, Easyfun-Ethereal 2000–02, Popeye 2002–, and Hulk Elvis 2005–, Koons has continued to produce sculpture but has also concentrated on complex paintings that fluctuate between abstraction and pop-culture references. In his most recent series Antiquity 2009– he explores antique art and eros.
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Jeff Koons Balloon Swan (Blue) Courtesy Gagosian Gallery High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating
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Jeff Koons Balloon Swan (Blue) Balloon Monkey (Red) Balloon Rabbit (Yellow) Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
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Jeff Koons Balloon Swan (Blue) Balloon Monkey (Red) Balloon Rabbit (Yellow) Courtesy Gagosian Gallery
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
I n te r vie w Let’s talk about the ‘Popeye’ series. Is it straight pop art? I don’t think so, because pop is about an externalisation of the viewer. I like to believe that what I do is very much the activity of real art, where the artist has Off and on, for almost two decades now, complete freedom to do what they want Jeff Koons has been the world’s most and show the connections with human expensive living artist, selling work for potential. upwards of $25 million, despite many of them, such as ‘Hanging Heart’ and ‘Bal- What’s your spinach? loon Dog’, not even being unique pieces. He’s also been married to an Italian ‘In my own life what gets me most excited porn-star-turned-politician, Illona Staller are my children. They’re energising: to be (better known as La Cicciolina), not to able to share your life with them and to mention the messy divorce, custody and offer them opportunity is so enriching.’ copyright suits. Yet he’s continually produced some of the most outrageous art of What’s your life-preserver? the last 40 years, creating giant puppies from pretty flowers and encasing vacuum ‘That would be art and being involved in cleaners in vitrines (long before Hirst’s this whole process. it takes you to a very shark). His first solo show in London fo- metaphysical place and that’s all an artcuses on his ‘Popeye’ series, based on the ist can do – make connections and be inDepression-era cartoon character who volved in something profound. Instead of thankfully is now out of copyright himself creating anxiety, it should be a vehicle for at the ripe old age of 80.
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removing it.’
Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
Jeff Koons hanging heart (gold/magenta), high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating 291 x 280 x 101,5 cm
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
You talk about acceptance, but your Talking of superheroes, one of your work still has an edge, whether it’s a
personal heroes was Salvador Dali.
porcelain model of Michael Jackson with Bubbles or images of you having
I met him at the Saint Regis Hotel when I
sex with your ex-wife.
was a teenager. He took me to an exhibition of his and he posed for some photos I
‘All my work tries to embrace visual power, now own the gouache study of that work and acceptance does not have to be all
and it hangs in my bedroom.
warm and cushy, there’s also a violence to acceptance. I was a painter until I left art
How do you feel about speculators flip-
school, when I started to deal with things
ping your work at auction? One even said
outside the self.’
that ‘Jeff Koons has performed better than oil’.
What’s your life-preserver? To a certain degree, I’m honoured, but I’m ‘That would be art and being involved in
disappointed that they don’t enjoy the
this whole process. You have to trust in
same connection to the power of art that
yourself, it takes you to a very metaphysical
I have as a collector. I love the responsi-
place and that’s all an artist can do – make
bility of the maintenance or preservation
connections and be involved in something
of art. I want to protect it.
profound. Instead of creating anxiety, it should be a vehicle for removing it.’
But you were on Wall Street once yourself, weren’t you?
To quote another of your characters, The Incredible Hulk, why wouldn’t I like ‘I ended up becoming a broker, and it was you when you’re angry?
really more like ad work, where you’re commissioned to do something except
I tend to think that the glass is always half
you don’t have the freedom of your own
full, and I try to show that through my
expression. But from childhood I was
work, but what makes me angry is a failure
brought up to be very self-sufficient, so I
of communication.
would go door-to-door selling gift-wrapping paper and candies.
You also employ 120 people in your studio, but you don’t like calling it a factory, Do you enjoy the attention of the art is that correct?
world? ‘I always wanted to be involved, I enjoy
I don’t feel very comfortable with that
having the platform of success. I don’t
term. I make about eight paintings and
enjoy it unless it’s about the work, so if
12 editions of sculptures a year. It’s not
I’m not in my studio for a couple of days I
that we are involved in craft – I hate craft, become quite nervous.’ craft is fetishism – but it’s just the time it takes to realise them.
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
Jeff Koons hanging heart (gold/magenta), high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating 291 x 280 x 101,5 cm
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Jeff Koons Moon (light pink), 1995-2000 high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating 330,2 x 330,2 x 101,6 cm
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
“ The filling of entire
vistas, with the larg
installations, create
of scale where viewe
the smallness of chi
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
e rooms, or entire
ge-scale
es a false sense
ers again return to
ildhood.�
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
Writer’s bio Name : Alice Yoo Sex / Nationality : m/US About : Alice Yoo is the founder and editor in chief of My Modern Metropolis, a place where trendspotters and art enthusiasts come to connect over creative ideas. After graduating from UCLA with a Bachelor’s in Economics, Alice received her MBA, worked in advertising for MTV and Outdoor Channel and then started My Modern Met in 2008. With over 2.5 million page views per month, My Modern Met has become an art, culture and lifestyle destination for the
Inq u i ry
modern man and woman.
Through his early use of everyday items such as vacuum cleaners and basketballs and later by creating oversized kitsch objects, Jeff Koons reflects upon the power of consumer industries and the aesthetics and culture of taste. Koons has made use of the kind of references reminiscent of Pop Art in its use of popular imagery and in his means of production, with multiple assistants working with him in the studio. He demands total perfection from specialists in each chosen medium and his work is manufactured with extraordinary precision. Drawing together a range of styles and spanning a broad chronology from early 1980s to the late 1990s, the works in ARTIST ROOMS highlight some of the artist’s most important series. In New Hoover Convertibles Koons preserves a banal, household object as a new commodity in perpetuity making its function obsolete within a contained vitrine. The idea of protected perfection is at the heart of Encased, from the artist’s famous series of basketball works, in which he sought to achieve constant equilibrium by suspending the balls in liquid. Winter Bears was first shown in Koons’s landmark exhibition Banality in 1988. The carved wooden figures derive from popular figurines, blown up to great proportions to create a sculpture that is at once familiar yet grotesque. Koons’s fascination with kitsch and Baroque styles is also found in Mound of Flowers and the Bourgeois Bust, a marble sculpture which depicts the artist and his wife, Ilona. This portrait bust is part of a larger body of work in which Koons and Ilona starred in their own erotic romance, documented through a series of sculpture and photographic works. The billboard Made in Heaven and the Art Magazine Ads use standard advertising methods and were made to publicise the project. p age
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
Jeff Koons Moon (light pink), 1995-2000 high chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating 330,2 x 330,2 x 101,6 cm
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Jeff Koons cracked egg (blue), 1994-2006 high chromium stainless steel two pieces: 198,1 x 157,5 x 157,5 cm and 45,7 x 121,9 x 121,9 cm
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Jeff Koons / Big Edgy Contradiction
E xhibi ti o n I n fo r m a t ion LACMA is delighted to announce exhibition SIZE DOES MATTER by various artists including Jeff Koons. Since his emergence in the 1980s Jeff Koons has blended the concerns and methods of Pop, Conceptual, and appropriation art with craft-making and popular culture to create his own unique iconography, often controversial and always engaging. His work explores contemporary obsessions with sex and desire; race and gender; and celebrity, media, commerce, and fame. A self-proclaimed “idea man,” Koons hires artisans and technicians to make the actual works For him, the hand of the artist is not the important issue: “Art is really just communication of something and the more archetypal it is, the more communicative it is.” Focusing on some of the most unexpected objects as models for his work, from balloon animals to advertising to pornography, Koons’s works eschew typical standards of “good taste” in art and zero in rather precisely on the vulnerabilities of hierarchies and value systems. Since his first solo show in 1980, Koons’ work has been widely exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. Koons’s recent exhibitions include solo shows at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh (2011), the Serpentine Gallery in London (2009), the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (2008), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008), and the Château de Versailles (2008), and he will have a retrospective at the LACMA in 2013.
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