Jeff Koons

Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, pp. 96-97, illustration of another example in colour
Robert Rosenblum, Ed., The Jeff Koons Handbook, London 1992, pp. 86-87, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist's Eye, 2005, pp. 92-93, illustration of another example in colour
Kathryn Hixson, 'Universal Experience: Art, Life, and the Tourist's Eye' in: Art on Paper, July- August 2005, p. 62

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although it fails to fully capture the three-dimensional nature of the sculpture. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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"This work liberated me. I was free now to work with objects that did not necessarily pre-exist. I could create models"

The artist cited in: Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 96

 

Gleaming with intensive reflective purity, the monumental human presence of the Kiepenkerl as he stands in front of you weighed down by the burden of the heavy baggage on his shoulders makes an incredibly profound artistic statement. Koons, arguably more than any artist in history, has believed in the power of surfaces and materials to reflect the universal and our world. Standing at human height and carrying the huge wooden baggage of everyday life on his back, being confronted with the Kiepenkerl is like confronting one's own reflection in history.

Situated directly between two of his most important series, 'Statuary' and 'Banality', Kiepenkerl represents a watershed in Jeff Koons' oeuvre. As he has pointed out, "This work liberated me. I was free now to work with objects that did not necessarily pre-exist. I could create models" (The artist cited in: Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 96). The Statuary series had represented a whole range of historical objects from the iconic contemporaneity  of  'Rabbit' to  to the history of 'Louis XIV' being re-made in a highly polished stainless steel to create a kind of hierarchy of kitsch and Banality was about a different kind of empire of kitsch in which the shininess of porcelain reflected the common man's access to nobility and matt surface of wood represented the same for religion.

Kiepenkerl stands alone and resplendent between these two series, glistening in the cast stainless steel that Koons describes as "the luxury of the proletariat" (the artist cited in: Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 21). Following the success of his Statuary series, Koons was invited to participate in the Munster sculpture project, a highly prestigious event which takes place every decade in the small German town of Munster. For this event Koons, the ultimate surveyor of late twentieth century American culture, decided to look into European culture to find the uncelebrated heroes. The subject in this work is rich with metaphor between art and life and is based on the Kiepenkerl memorial statue in a small square in Münster, the cultural centre of Wesphalia in Germany. A 'Kiepenkerl', literally translating from German as 'pannier fellow', was a travelling purveyor of poultry, milk, eggs and the like, who carried his wares from village to village in a wicker basket on his back, the 'kiepe'. There are obvious correlations here between the artist struglling to come to terms with his predecessors and carrying the weight of history on his shoulders. Seen here, the sack is almost like a Marcel Broodthaers or Louise Bourgeois sculpture, divided into sections with a different classification of food in each part, the baggage is literally spilling out of his 'kiepe', with a hare draped over the top, a reference to Beuys, and pheasant hanging from the bottom. Classically sporting a cap, stick, pipe, blue shirt and red neckerchief, he is a stereotype specific to traditional German folklore: an itinerant trapper, roaming peddler, and vagabond tinker who has come to emblematise rustic innocence. However today the role of the Kiepenkerle is purely as a kind of folkloric tour guide, a living kitsch emblem of years gone by.

Koons has discussed the effect of this tradition: "I felt I was participating in the European life style. I was being liberated to go into the World of Allegory. There was more story-telling in Europe. The Kiepenkerl piece was about Self-Sufficiency. I always liked the hare on the sculpture because of Joseph Beuys" (the artist cited in: Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 96). Being a journeyman of no fixed horizons, free of responsibility, and burdened only with the carrier of his livelihood the Kiepenkerl embodies a spirit of carefree wanderlust, much as the American artist, Koons, travelling to Europe had symbolised. Carrying a huge amount of cultural baggage, Koons had come to germany to sell his philosophical wares. He also signifies an innocent economic model in which barter is the main form of transaction for harmless commodities like hares and hams.

In this context, the sculpture implicates the enduring influence of Koons' early career as a registered salesman of commodities, stocks and bonds on Wall Street. Indeed, Koons has described how the vein of economics runs through all his work: "I have always used cleanliness and a form of order to maintain for the viewer a belief in the essence of the eternal, so that the viewer does not feel threatened economically. When under economic pressure you start to see disintegration around you. Things do not remain orderly. So I have always placed order in my work not out of a respect for minimalism, but to give the viewer a sense of economic security" (the artist cited in: Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 50).

While the sentimentality and extravagance of Kiepenkerl jolt the viewer's expectations and unashamedly encapsulate kitsch, the work also provides a sense of reassuring security. Koons recognises that the phenomenon of taste is cyclical: the good taste of today is necessarily condemned to become the bad taste of yesterday in the future. Thus exhibition of bad taste can become nostalgic and comforting both socially and, by extension, economically. Post Modernism incarnate, Kiepenkerl appeals to and knowingly exploits an innate yearning for a golden age of blameless harmony.

According to Jeff Koons the brilliant chromium Kiepenkerl marks the decisive shift in his output as it was this work that concluded his fixation with the readymade and opened the door to a new era in his artistic career. Through a combination of fortuitous circumstance and his own artistic development, the story of Kiepenkerl allowed Koons' to create models rather than reproduce replicas of found objects. He has described this narrative in detail: "A foundry made [Kiepenkerl], and when they pulled the stainless steel out of the oven to knock the ceramic shell off it they banged it up against the wall while it was still molten...So we had a specialist brought in who was an absolutely phenomenal man with steel. He could do anything by rebending and reconverting the shapes to fit back together again. This work liberated me. I was free now to work with objects that did not necessarily pre-exist. I could create models" (the artist cited in: Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 96). The manufacture of Kiepenkerl thus represents the cathartic moment when Koons abandoned the constrictions of a Duchampian readymade ideology and embarked on a journey of creativity that has subsequently yielded such monumental masterworks as Puppy and Hanging Heart (Magenta/ Gold).