Jeff Koons

Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1989

Los Angeles, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Luxury and Degradation, July - August 1986

Exh. Cat., Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeff Koons, 1988, cat. no. 19, pp. 30-31, illustrated in color (Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train)
Exh. Cat., New York, The Museum of Modern Art, High & Low: Modern Art and Popular Culture, 1990, cat no. 32, p. 395, illustrated (Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train, 1/3)
Jeff Koons and Robert Rosenblum, The Jeff Koons Handbook, London, 1992, pp. 66-67, illustrated in color (Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train)
Angelika Muthesius, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, pl. no. 10, p.74, illustrated in color
Exh. Cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Jeff Koons, 1992, cat. no. 28, pl. 24, illustrated in color (Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train)
Robert Rosenblum, Jeff Koons: Easyfun - Ethereal, New York, 2000, p. 34, illustrated in color (Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train)
Exh. Cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons: Four Decades of Art from the Broad Collection, 2001, p. 224, illustrated in color (Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train)
Exh. Cat., Bielefeld, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Jeff Koons. Pictures 1980-2002, New York, 2002, p. 21, illustrated in color (Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train)
Exh. Cat., Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Jeff Koons, 2003, pp. 44-45 and p. 51, illustrated (Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train)
Exh. Cat., New York, C&M Arts, Jeff Koons: Highlights of 25 Years, 2004, pl. 15, illustrated in color (Jim Beam J. B. Turner Train)
Sarah Cosulich Canarutto, Jeff Koons (Supercontemporanea series), Milan, 2006, pp. 44-45, illustrated in color (Jim Beam J. B. Turner Train)

"I was walking down Fifth Avenue and I saw in a liquor store this train that was made of plastic and porcelain. It was a Jim Beam train. What caught my interest was the possibility to transform it and to cast it in stainless steel and bring it to a mirror finish, but to also maintain the soul of the piece, which was the liquor inside…" - Jeff Koons

Part of the Luxury and Degradation series, Jim Beam - Observation Car is a brilliantly polished trophy of one of society's most decadent and ultimately destabilizing pastimes: excessive drinking.  Inspired by the garish advertisements on an end-to-end subway ride, this series aimed to expose the artificial ways in which advertising plundered archetypes and constructs of opulence to simulate and stimulate social ambition.  As the artist noted, "I wanted to show how luxury and abstraction are used to debase people and take away their economic and political power." (A. Muthesius, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 21) Consequently, in Koons' eponymous exhibits at International With Monument Gallery and Daniel Weinberg Gallery in 1986, viewers were confronted with gaudy advertisements applied on canvas and cast stainless steel ornaments of decadence. The effect on the public was reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp's elevation of the readymade to the realm of Fine Art.  Essentially, the white gallery walls transformed these passive objects into proactive 'art', infusing them with self-reverence and exposing the public to the shallowness and deception of the media. 

According to Koons, the public's sense of agency was grotesquely undermined by the media's exploitation of class struggle.  The most impoverished were wooed by visions of upper-crust blitheness, while the slightly better off were visually hypnotized by suggestive abstractions.  Ultimately, the goal of these advertisements was to sell alcohol. 

Like the image of a wealthy and beautiful couple drinking Gordon's Gin on the beach, the sensuous and highly suggestive ripple of Frangelico and the jewel encrusted bombshell who assumes we drink Martell Cognac, Jim Beam tapped into a specific alcoholic demographic by filling a rustic train with fifths of Bourbon.  As a symbol of early industrialism and the expansion of the American West, the train is a powerful, image of agency and virility. From the romantic vision of the locomotive were born American folk heroes such as Casey Jones and John Henry while lionized American industrialists such as Leland Stanford and Jay Gould made their fortunes from the railways. The development of the United States was fueled by the growth of the railroads; the growth of the railroads led to gold rushes, boomtowns and robber barons; all of which fostered the concept of  "The American Dream". As memorialized by Charles Sheeler’s iconic photograph Wheels, trains were the ultimate symbols of the triumph of our industrialized genius and capitalist growth. By referencing this object so intimately connected to the country’s sense of self, Jim Beam subtly mingled the power of the train with the consumerism of its product. Thus encased, demon alcohol is presented as part and parcel with American pride.  Yet, like Andy Warhol's Bomb, the consumer is expected to swallow its degradation for the sake of art and artifice.

Koons' irony continues by his choice to sheath the car in polished stainless steel. The chrome colored surface could easily be mistaken for silver or platinum, appealing to our sense of luxury being both shiny and sleek.  Yet it is inescapably a common material, a 'fake luxury', or the 'luxury of the proletariat' as it is sometimes belittlingly considered.  As the artist notes, "The objects are given an artificial luxury, and artificial value, which transforms them completely, changing their function, and to a certain extent de-criticalizing them. My surface is very much a false front for an underlying degradation." (Ibid., p. 74). By utilizing a material so clearly phony, Koons draws attention to the methods by which we are compelled to stare, to touch and ultimately to purchase.  Yves Klein attempted a similar ruse with his unforgettable Leap into the Void where the viewer is asked to believe the unbelievable. Ironically, the artist's illumination of the methods of media compulsion exposes his own ulterior motives. As he notes, ostensibly he encourages us "not to be seduced. Not to give up your economic power base. At the same time, anyone who bought one of these pieces would also be giving into this seduction, ultimately enhancing my power." (Ibid., p. 21)