JEFF KOONS IN FLORENCE - English Edition

Edited by Sergio Risaliti

Koons’s art can be quite captivating. I have been astonished by the powers of his flower puppy, at ground level or seen from a balcony in Bilbao. The sweetness of the Westie, its literally live organicity, the sheer folly of combining fauna and flora in the same piece, and the Alice-in-Wonderland gigantism are amusing and endearing. So are his gleaming stainless-steel hearts. Disembarking from a boat in the Grand Canal and into the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, I remember being confronted by the lightest and most red of hearts.

It resembled a thin, fragile, and light Christmas-tree decoration. But of course it was made of thick metal, it was very heavy, and it was huge. It brought me laughter and hope.

How does Koons achieve such effects? By simple means, as I see it—by focusing, for example, on objects and figures that are part of a child’s world, innocent and funny, the latter because something about them is incongruous, in size, surface, or juxtaposition to another object or figure. The work is virtually devoid of social commentary, although it basks in the social significance of certain objects (such as basketballs) or personalities (such as Michael Jackson). It brings to mind Andy Warhol, but without overt darkness—no distressed Jackie, no electric chair, no car crashes. And yet, in the work as a whole, there is an undercurrent of foreboding, as if a universe this purified and magical would have to hide untold risks and dangers.

Antonio Damasio, “Designs for living”, in Jeff Koons. A Retrospective, edited

by Scott Rothkopf, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2014, p. 242.

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Dario Nardella

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Fabrizio Moretti

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Jeff KoonS in florence Sergio Risaliti

With Jeff KoonS StarS are ever Being Born Norman Rosenthal

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Jeff KoonS’S epic poem

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the “ringhiera,” or the mutaBle face of the palazzo vecchio

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Joachim Pissarro Carlo Francini

Sala dei gigli and donatello’S Judith

Francesco Vossilla

old WordS in neW converSationS Cristina Acidini

“figura di fiamma di fuoco”: the “figura Serpentinata” in fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century florentine Sculpture Elena Capretti

a Ball of magic Edoardo Nesi

Biography

Selected Bibliography

Solo Exhibitions

Jeff KoonS in florence / Sergio Risaliti

A Faun in the Palazzo Vecchio Palazzo Vecchio, or Palazzo della Signoria, is a stone treasure chest, whose imposing bulk holds within invaluable evidence of Florentine’s magnificence through the centuries. A symbol of the city’s political life, the building’s construction was deemed necessary to defend the Priori delle Arti (the representatives of the city’s medieval trade guilds) and the Gonfaloniere della Giustizia (the elected standard-bearer of the republic). Designed by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1299, it underwent substantial modifications in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As the seat of the highest republican offices, it opened its doors to the dangerous power of Savonarola, then, under the rule of the Gonfaloniere Pier Soderini, it became “the school of the world,” when Leonardo and Michelangelo’s sublime art became a sought-after tool of political propaganda. With the fall of the Florentine Republic, Cosimo I, Duke and Grand Duke of Florence, moved from the Palazzo de’ Medici, the family’s residence since the era of Cosimo Il Vecchio, and took possession of the Palazzo della Signoria to turn the “house of the Florentines” into a ducal palace in 1539. The expansion and pictorial decorations of the Salone dei Cinquecento were the work of Giorgio Vasari and his workshop, as were the decorations of the Quartiere degli Elementi (Apartments of the Elements) and the apartments of Eleonora of Toledo. The Sala delle Udienze or Sala della Giustizia (Audience Chamber or Hall of Justice), decorated with frescoes by Francesco Salviati in 1543-1545, comes before the Sala dei Gigli (Hall of Lilies), entered through a beautiful wooden door with portraits of Dante and Petrarch. This sumptuous environment was conceived by the brothers Benedetto and Giuliano da Maiano, who created both the magnificent coffered wooden ceiling and the marble St. John the Baptist and putti above the entryway. The frescoes that decorate the opposite wall are by Domenico Ghirlandaio. An example of refined humanism, these paintings depict The Apotheosis of St. Zenobius with the Deacons Eugenio and Crescenzio in the center, while to either side are enthroned heroes and exemplary figures from the Roman Republic: Brutus, Mucius Scaevola, and Camillus on the left, Decius, Scipio, and Cicero, pater patriae, on the right. The bronze original of Judith and Holofernes, a late work by Donatello (1386–1466), has been on display in the Sala dei Gigli since 1988. The group, including its base with bronze bas-reliefs, is presented on a tall granite and marble columnar pedestal, conceived in Donato de’ Bardi’s Renaissance workshop, based on the model of ancient candelabras.

In this hall decked in fleurs de lys, we find a celebrated sculpture from Roman antiquity, whose appearance has been dramatically transformed by the addition of a shimmering sphere that has been added to the familiar form.

Gazing Ball (Barberini Faun) by Jeff Koons is a sculpture composed of plaster and glass completed in 2013 as part of the eponymous Gazing Ball series, which juxtaposes popular American decorative and utilitarian objects with illustrious ancient artworks. Koons used a perfect reproduction of the Barberini Faun, a Roman-era marble statue from Munich,s Glyptothek. The plaster cast is faithful to the unrestored original, which is missing an arm and the left foot and with part of the right hand and genitals broken. The satyr sleeps half-lying as if leaning against a tree trunk. The nude body emanates clear sexual power, even with dormant limbs. The gazing ball has simultaneous effects of a panopticon and of anamorphosis, reflecting the spectators in the hall, the fresco decorations on the walls, the bronze and marble Renaissance sculptures, and the repeating fleurs de lys pattern. The Gazing Ball series was first

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introduced in 2013 at David Zwirner in New York. For that gallery exhibition, Koons selected some of the most celebrated works of the past: the Farnese Hercules, the Ariadne, the Belvedere Torso, the Lycian Apollo, the Centaur with the Lapith Woman, and the Esquiline Venus. The ensemble could have constituted a traditional gipsoteca, or aristocratic gallery of antiquities. In Gazing Ball, as he had already done in the paintings in his Antiquity series, Koons enjoyed shaking things up, breaking down the categories between highbrow/lowbrow, popular/elite, and ancient/contemporary, to achieve transcendence. The viewer is encouraged to appreciate and admire forms and images of different eras and origins, drawing on different values, taking them all in on the same level and then considering them individually. The exhibition layout at David Zwirner allowed viewers to admire ancient statues in the company of familiar contemporary subject matter such as, a snowman, a row of mailboxes, a garden fountain—all objects that Koons has said have “the sense of ready-made inherent in them”. The critic and philosopher Arthur Danto compiled a list of common objects, trinkets and knickknacks, favored by middle-class consumers, to which Koons has restored dignity and singularity: the plaster trophies one wins for knocking bottles over in cheap carnivals; marzipan mice; the dwarves and reindeer that appear at Christmastime on suburban laws or the crèche figures before firehouses in Patchogue and Mastic; bath toys; porcelain or plastic saints; what goes into Easter baskets; ornaments in fishbowls; comic heads attached to bottle-stoppers in home bars.

This eclectic list resembles that evoked by Arthur Rimbaud in “The Alchemy of the Word” in A Season in Hell: “For a long time I boasted that I was master of all possible landscapes and I thought the great figures of modern painting and poetry were laughable. What I liked were absurd paintings, pictures over doorways, stage-sets, carnival backdrops, billboards, brightly colored prints; old-fashioned literature, church Latin, erotic books full of misspellings, the kind of novels our grandmothers read, fairy tales, little books for children, old operas, silly old songs, the naïve rhythms of country rhymes.”

The sculptures of the Gazing Ball series—entirely white, perfectly cast in specially-formulated plaster were displayed on white pedestals.

Compared to the originals, scattered around the world, the Gazing Ball casts were subject to a substantial modification. As noted, Koons attached a sphere of reflective blue glass to each statue. On Gazing Ball (Barberini Faun), for instance, it is positioned on the young sleeping satyr’s left thigh. The sphere is immobile, the faun doesn’t move, and yet everything vibrates with a strange and indefinable tension. The perfection of the two objects—the cast and the sphere—seems disrupted by a subtle background noise arising from the contrast between categories, styles, and forms: between the quiet stillness of the classical ideal and the unsettling apparition of the surreal, the unflappable confidence of Renaissance beauty and the disconcerting invasion of the contemporary. Ambiguity and pleasantness, contemplation and seduction, tranquility and excitement—these are the effects, symptoms, sensations, and behaviors that Koons’s work abundantly stimulates to forge a dialogue —whether conscious or unconscious—with the viewer whoever that may be.

The “gazing ball”—also known by names including garden globe or mirror ball —in Koons’s title, are popular objects among the American middle class, enjoyed by adults and children alike, commonly used to decorate suburban lawns and gardens. Koons has often mentioned how much such gazing balls have fascinated him since childhood, remind him of his native Pennsylvania.

Sala dei gigli and donatello’S Judith / Francesco Vossilla

By how much profitable thoughts are more full and solid, by so much are they also more cumbersome and heavy: vice, death, poverty, diseases, are grave and grievous. A man should have his soul instructed in the means to sustain and to contend with evils, and in the rules of living and believing well: and often rouse it up, and exercise it in this noble study.

M. de Montaigne, Upon some verses of Virgil.

The Sala dei Gigli (Hall of Lilies) physically connects two sumptuous sections of Palazzo Vecchio, commissioned in the sixteenth century when the Republican building was turned into a luxurious Medici residence.1 I am referring specifically to the Sala della Udienza (Hall of Justice), with its beautiful scenes painted by Francesco Salviati, and the Sala delle Carte Geografiche (Hall of Maps), with its special cabinets with fronts depicting the countries of the world from the perspective of sixteenth-century Italians, and that of Cosimo I de’ Medici in particular. The Sala dei Gigli takes us into a symbolic center of Republican culture, because the reconstruction done by Benedetto and Giuliano da Maiano (1472–1476), and especially the decoration commissioned in the 1480s. These included a series of Illustrious Men commissioned to artists well-known in Florence and just come from working in Rome (namely, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Piero Perugino, Biagio d’Antonio, and Piero del Pollaiolo). These fresco “celebrities” naturally had to come to Florence after the success of these “Tuscan” masters in the Sistine Chapel. In 1482, the Signoria chose a theme—Illustrious Men— that could give current glory to some of the archetypes of Roman public virtue and heroism. But Domenico Bigordi, called Ghirlandaio, was the only one to complete the task (1485), frescoing the eastern with a triumphal arch, or possibly the loggia of an ancient city, full of busts of emperors and figures from Roman history, including Decius, Scipio, Cicero, right; and Brutus, Mucius Scaevola, and Furio Camillo, left. In the center of this neo-classical composition, Domenico placed holy figures of saints Zenobius, Stephen and Lawrence to express through the themes of ancient religion and history, the cornerstones on which the Republic’s political ideals were founded.2 Bernardo Rosselli decorated the other three sides of the room with the golden lily of France in a blue field topped by a red rake. The ceiling, made in hexagonal sections, is by Francesco di Giovanni, nicknamed Francione, and Giuliano del Tasso. It also shows our golden lily and rosettes, and the frieze bears the Republican symbols of a pair of lions, one holding Florence’s coat of arms and the other that of the Republic.

The marble door dates to the period of Benedetto and Giuliano da Maiano’s work and is an exemplary piece of sophisticated classicism as seen in the lithe fluted pilasters and the architraves with festoons, lily and cross, symbols of the city and people of Florence. This also explains the elegant, almost elegiac statue of Florence’s patron saint St. John the Baptist sculpted by Benedetto da Maiano. Befitting such a glorification of the Republic and its Roman spirit is the ornate marquetry of the figures of Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca.

The Cancelleria, which can be accessed from the Sala dei Gigli, features a sixteenth-century bust of Niccolò Machiavelli, a reminder of the public role of the great Florentine intellectual.

For several decades, the dominating element in the Sala dei Gigli has been the monumental Judith and Holofernes by Donato de’ Bardi, better known as Donatello (Florence, c. 1386–1466); this is a genuine masterpiece of bronze work in the Italian Renaissance. The group, likely created between 1457 and 1464 for the Medici family in Via Larga,3 was not Donatello’s first work to be placed here. The groundbreaking marble David that Donatello had sculpted for the Cathedral’s buttresses had been placed here and was then moved to Palazzo della Signoria in 1416.4 We would be remiss at this point if we did not re-read Judith’s biblical story.

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In the Book of Judith we learn how the proud, tyrannical King Nebuchadnezzar —presented as an Assyrian monarch rather than Babylonian—decided to subjugate the entire world. His army, led by the able commander Holofernes, set forth to conquer the kingdoms of the West. Spreading death and destruction throughout Judea, Holofernes took the town of Bethulia under siege. The Jews were weary and ready to submit to the foreign power, when Judith—a wealthy widow, chaste despite her great beauty—came forward to save her land. Outraged by her countrymen’s temptation to surrender, she went to the city leaders and encouraged them to have more faith in God and pray, humbling themselves. And, through the genuine, trusting humility of the elders, the arrogance of the hateful invaders would be punished.5 Judith informed these elders that she would attempt to free the city, but that they must known nothing of her plan. Before leaving Bethulia, she prayed the Lord to help her and make Holofernes pay for his pride by his own sword.6 Lavishly and seductively dressed, she went to the Assyrian field with a servant named Abra. She introduced herself to the still shrewd Holofernes with the excuse of wanting to help him defeat Bethulia, dazzling everyone with her flaunted physical beauty. She told the enemy general that the Jews would certainly be defeated, as they were suffering from such hunger that they were on the verge of eating food blessed for sacrament. Until that evil impiety happens, she suggested that it would be smart for Holofernes to postpone the final attack and simply go on with the siege. The idea seemed good to the Assyrians, who had grown lazy, and after four days, Holofernes invited Judith to agree voluntarily to be his. As he told to his faithful eunuch Bagoas (or Vagao), among the Assyrians, it would be shameful for a woman to tease a real man, leaving free from his hands.7 Judith agreed to dine with Holofernes in his tent, full of trophies of his recent military campaigns.

During the supper, the general started to desire Judith’s favors,8 but completely inebriated, he fell asleep in his bed.9 Judith was left alone in the tent and had Abra guard the entrance to the room. She took the sword from the drunk, defenseless Holofernes and severed his head with two blows to his neck.10 She gave her servant the severed head, and they returned to Bethulia where Judith was welcomed and feted. The Assyrians, disoriented by the loss of their “head,” were defeated once and for all. After the victory, Judith the heroine and Bethulia’s people went to the Temple of Jerusalem, where she presented Holofernes’ remains to the priests. Judith returned to Bethulia where she lived in complete chaste widowhood.

Until 1494, the Judith was in Palazzo Medici’s second courtyard. The Republic confiscated it along with Donatello’s bronze David to decorate the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio and the building’s first courtyard, respectively.11 Luca Landucci’s diary even mentions it: “December 21, 1495. The bronze Judith, which had been in the house of Piero de’ Medici, was placed on the Ringhiera of the Palagio de’ Signori, by the side of the door.”12 Judith became the first statue to decorate Piazza della Signoria, though it was placed on the Ringhiera to the public building, where it took on an anti-Medici significance.

At the time, Florence was in the midst of the reformist headiness expressed in Girolamo Savonarola’s vehement sermons. His harsh, vivid sermons were burning with hope and powerful colorful expressions, which might have paired well with tangible symbols of some imagined figures of the new Christian society that Savonarola called for, such as adolescents (like David when he

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Bruto, Muzio Scevola e Camillo, detail Palazzo Vecchio (Sala dei Gigli), Florence

26 September 2015 – 21 January 2016 Palazzo Vecchio, Sala dei Gigli Piazza della Signoria, Arengario di Palazzo Vecchio Exhibition curated by Sergio Risaliti

Promoted by the Municipality of Florence Main sponsor Moretti Galleria d’Arte with the contribution of Camera di Commercio Firenze In collaboration with Florence International Biennial Antiques Fair David Zwirner Exhibition organisation and coordination, project work management, staging supervision Associazione MUS.E Structural design Archea Associati AEI progetti

Staging graphics design Forma Edizioni Art handling Arteria Construction of pedestal for Pluto and Proserpina Studi d’Arte Cave Michelangelo Communications Associazione MUS.E

Press office Opera Laboratori Fiorentini – Gruppo Civita: Salvatore La Spina, Barbara Izzo and Arianna Diana Comune di Firenze: Marco Agnoletti, Elisa Di Lupo Catalogue Forma Edizioni

Sponsor ITAF - Gruppo Zelari With the help and support of: Silfi, Piccini Trasporti Industriali srl Matulli Mobili Edil Bonaccorso Special thanks: Guild of the Dome Association

We would like to express our special appreciation to: Jeff Koons Dario Nardella, Mayor of Florence Fabrizio Moretti Leonardo Bassilichi Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Storici, Artistici ed Etnoantropologici della città di Firenze The administration and personnel of the Municipality of Florence Manuele Braghero, Francesca Santoro, Mario Andrea Ettorre, Rita Corsini, Tommaso Sacchi Sonia Nebbiai, Gabriella Farsi, Carmela Valdevies, Serena Pini, Claudia Bardelloni, Antonella Chiti Michele Mazzoni, Giorgio Caselli, Paolo Ferrara Matteo Spanò, Elena Arsenio, Andrea Batistini, Andrea Bianchi, Daniela Carboni, Giovanni Carta, Monica Consoli, Valentina Gensini, Roberta Masucci, Cecilia Pappaianni, Daniele Pasquini, Barbara Rapaccini, Pier Luigi Ricciardelli, Francesca Santoro, Lorenzo Valloriani, Valentina Zucchi Antonio Addari, Jamez Basora, Alberto Bianchi, Andrea Bonaccorso, Silvia Cresti, Elena Magini, Enrico Marinelli, Mara Martini, Luciano Massari, Marie Andrée Mondini, Leonardo Monti, Michelangelo Perrella, Maurizio Rossi, Stephanie Rudolph, Elvis Shkambi, Andreas Weisheit Joachim Pissarro, Almine Rech Gallery Norman Rosenthal, Gagosian Gallery Jeff Koons Studio Galleria Moretti David Zwirner

Editorial project Forma Edizioni srl, Florence, Italy redazione@formaedizioni.it www.formaedizioni.it Editorial production Archea Associati Publishing and editorial coordination Laura Andreini Textual supervision Riccardo Bruscagli Editorial staff Valentina Muscedra Maria Giulia Caliri Beatrice Papucci Elena Ronchi Graphic design Tommaso Bovo Elisa Balducci Vitoria Muzi Isabella Peruzzi Mauro Sampaolesi Translations Johanna Bishop Katy Hannan Miriam Hurley with the contribution of Shilpa Prasad, Jesse Locker Printing Lito Terrazzi, Florence, Italy

For his works © Jeff Koons For the texts © The authors The editor is available to copyright holders for any questions about unidentified iconographic sources. © 2016 Forma Edizioni srl, Firenze, Italia All rights reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

First edition: February 2016 ISBN: 978-88-99534-05-9

Photo credits © Pietro Savorelli, Benedetta Gori and Damiano Verdiani, pp. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 20-21, 23, 24-25, 26-27, 29, 30, 40-41, 63 © Serge Domingie Rabatti & Domingie Firenze, cover, pp. 3, 10-11, 13, 14-15, 17, 18, 37, 50, 68, 73, 74, 79, 80 © 2016. Foto Scala, Firenze/Luciano Romano - on loan from Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, p. 39 © 2016. Foto Scala, Firenze - on loan from Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, p. 45 © On loan from Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities / Raffaello Bencini/Archivi Alinari, Firenze, p. 46 © Jeff Koons/Photo: Tom Powel Imaging, pp. 49, 51, 71 © Jeff Koons/Photo: Marc Domage, p. 52 © Jeff Koons/Photo: Laurent Lecat, p. 55 © Jeff Koons/Photo: Rebecca Fanuele, Courtesy Almine Rech Gallery, pp. 57, 58, 66 © Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München/ Photo: Renate Kühling, p. 67

Pluto and Proserpina, 2010-2013 mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, and live flowering plants 129 × 65 3/4 × 56 5/8 inches 327.7 × 167 × 143.8 cm © Jeff Koons cover, pp. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10-11, 13, 14-15, 17, 18, 80 Gazing Ball (Barberini Faun), 2013 plaster and glass 70 × 48 × 54 7/8 inches 177.8 × 121.9 × 139.4 cm © Jeff Koons pp. 20-21, 23, 24-25, 26-27, 29, 30, 37, 40-41, 79