Jeff Koons

Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Europe
Sale: Phillips de Pury & Company, New York, Contemporary Art, 12 November 2009, Lot 7
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Robert Rosenblum, ed., Jeff Koons - The Handbook, New York 1992, p. 157
Angelika Muthesius, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, p. 77. no. 14, illustration of another example in colour
Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Dickinson Roundell Inc., Aftershock. The Legacy of the Ready Made in Post-War and Contemporary American Art, 2003, p. 87, no. 37, illustration of another example
Exhibition Catalogue, Oslo, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art, Jeff Koons: Retrospective, 2004, p. 41, illustration of another example in colour
Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Jeff Koons, Madrid 2009, p. 198, installation shot of another example in colour, p. 207, illustration of another example in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Consistent with the stainless steel medium, in raking light there are extremely fine and unobtrusive residual polishing brush marks in places throughout, which are inherent. On very close inspection, there are a few minute imperfections around the mouldings of the stainless steel, which are original and inherent to the artist's choice of medium.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"Luxury and Degradation is much more sociological. I just rode the subways here in New York. And I would go from one economic area, from Harlem, to the other, Grand Central Station. I got the whole spectrum of advertising. You deal with the lowest economic base to the highest level. I realized how the level of visual abstraction is changing. The more money comes into play, the more abstract. It was like they were using abstraction to debase you, because they always want to debase you." The artist

Ice Bucket, from Jeff Koon's Luxury and Degradation series, is a testament to and exploration of middle class desire. Composed of reproduced liquor billboard advertisements and alcohol related paraphernalia such as a travel cocktail cabinet, a liquid measurement, a Baccarat crystal decanter and pail and the present lot, the series enters into a discussion with the seductive appeal of luxury and the manipulative language of advertising. Exhibited at International with Monuments in New York in 1986, only one year after his first solo show Equilibrium at the same location, the series focus on glamorized products that were seen by the middle class as expressions of upward mobility resonated with acute accuracy in the middle of the 1980s financial boom. 

Koon's fascination with the relationship between consumerism, social status and art has been the central axis of his work from the moment he first burst on to the New York art scene in the early 1980s with his celebrated Pre-New series of Hoovers. From that moment onwards,  Koon's has articulated our cultural and personal obsessions with unabashed gusto and conviction. He has absorbed and reoffered elements of the everyday, that through his subtle reconfiguration and re-contextualisation as an object of art, give pause to make the eye linger and the mind question.

Intrinsic to Koons' success, is his ability to harness and exploit the illusion of the surface, and it is this enthusiasm for the superficial that is inescapably evident in the present work. It was through its use in the Luxury and Degradation series that Koons first discovered the informative possibilities of polished stainless steel, a material that he would utilise perhaps more than any other his future work. In stainless steel, Koons found the perfect material; the utilitarian medium of pots and pans that could be shined into 'fake luxury'. For Koons, the thinly veiled fallacy the potential of polished stainless steel allowed (that is looks like sliver – but the owner knows it is not) spoke directly illogical possibilities promised by the suggestively alluring liquor ad campaigns (good looks, sex, fame, fortune).  "In this series, I was telling people not to give up their economic power-that this pursuit of luxury was a form of degradation and not to be debased but it but to maintain their economic power. I was really telling people to try and protect themselves from debasement." The Artist in: Exhibition Catalogue, New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Easyfun- Ethereal, 2000, p. 32