Jeff Koons

Max Hetzler Gallery, Cologne

Private Collection, Cologne

Private Collection, Cologne

Sale: Christie's, London, Post-War and Contemporary Art, 30 June 2009, Lot 28

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

Exhibition Catalogue, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jeff Koons, 1988, p. 29, no. 18, illustration of another example 

Exhibition Catalogue, Kassel, Museum Fridericianum Kassel, Schlaf der Vernunft, 1988, p. 223 (text) 

Exhibition Catalogue, Boston, The Institute of Contemporary Art, (and travelling), The Binational, American Art in the late 1980s, 1988-89, p. 128, no. 44, illustration of another example

Exhibition Catalogue, Newport, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Objectives: The New Sculpture, 1990, p. 88, illustration of another example 

Angelika Muthesius, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, pp. 86-87, illustration of another example in colour

Jeff Koons, Ed., The Jeff Koons Handbook, London 1992, pp. 80-81, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Jeff Koons, 1992, n.p., no. 36, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum; and Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Jeff Koons, 1992-93, p. 49, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, Aarhus, Kunstmuseum Aarhus, Jeff Koons, 1993, p. 48, no. 32, illustration of another example in colour

Exhibition Catalogue, New York, Gagosian Gallery, Jeff Koons Andy Warhol: Flowers, 2002, p. 18, illustration of another example in colour

Hans Werner Holzwarth, Jeff Koons, Cologne 2009, p. 228, installation view of another example; and pp. 230-31, illustration of another example in colour 

Exhibition Catalogue, Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Es geht voran, Kunst der 80er: eine Düsseldorfer Perspektive, 2010, p. 149, installation view of another example 

Exhibition Catalogue, Frankfurt, Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Jeff Koons: The Sculptor, 2012, p. 157, illustration of another example in colour 

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate. Condition: This work is in very good condition.
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“I thought stainless steel would be a wonderful material, I could polish it, and I could create a fake luxury. I never wanted real luxury, instead, I wanted proletarian luxury, something visually intoxicating, disorientating.”

Jeff Koons, ‘Dialogues on Self Acceptance’, in: Exhibition Catalogue, Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Jeff Koons, 2012, p. 19.

Created in 1986, Flowers forms part of Jeff Koons breakthrough body of work: Statuary. First exhibited at Ileana Sonnabend’s SoHo gallery as part of the feted ‘Neo Geo’ group show, this series furnished Koons’ ascension into the high art mainstream. Comprising a total of 10 different sculptures, each cast in immaculate and high-sheen stainless steel, this series brought forth the iconic symbol of late twentieth-century Pop, Rabbit, as well as gleaming interpretations  of cultural objects, spanning gift-shop souvenirs and artistic nobilis, from a statuette caricature of Bob Hope to a bust of Louis XIV. In line with the core of Koons’ practice, these works deliver high art with wide appeal by jubilantly responding to the legacy of Baroque and Rococo through its contemporary subsistence in mass-produced objects. With Statuary, Koons furthered his dialogue with stainless steel, a material that is now regarded the reflective calling card of his acclaimed practice.

First utilised for the preceding corpus, Luxury and Degradation – a series in which varying forms of drinking paraphernalia, from crystal decanters and ice buckets to a novelty Jim Beam whiskey train, were cast in stainless steel – Koons realised the conceptual and aspirational potential of stainless steel as an inexpensive material that possessed the lustre of faux luxury. Though posing as a feat of silversmithing, these works are made from an industrial material which only appears lavish. And such is the desired effect for Jeff Koons. From an edition of three, the present work marries an evocation of excessive Rococo flamboyance with manufactured souvenir shop ornament. It is a prime example of Koons democratic artistic strategy.

As outlined by the artist: “Statuary presents a panoramic view of society; on the one hand there is Louis XIV and on the other hand there is Bob Hope. If you put art in the hands of the monarch it will reflect his ego and eventually become decorative. If you put art in the hands of the masses it will reflect mass ego and eventually become decorative. If you put art in the hands of Jeff Koons it will reflect my ego and eventually become decorative” (Jeff Koons, ‘Dialogues on Self Acceptance’, in: Exhibition Catalogue, Basel, Fondation Beyeler, Jeff Koons, 2012, p. 20). Taking a stance that is unabashedly post-modern and socially egalitarian, in 2008 Koons framed his work within the ultimate incarnation of this outlook when a major retrospective of his work was installed in the historic height of opulence that is Versailles. Koons’ artwork was juxtaposed within the salons of Versailles, including the iconic stainless steel Rabbit from Statuary, the porcelain Michael Jackson and Bubbles from Banality, the erotically charged polychromed wood Large Vase of Flowers from Made in Heaven, and on display on the palace grounds the colossal stainless steel Balloon Flower (Yellow) from his Celebration series. Thus, the super-reflectivity of stainless steel mixed with popular icons sat within the French Rococo opulence of the Ancient Régime.

This exhibition was an extraordinary realisation of Koons’s formative will to heighten the commonplace and abase the noble – a divisive strategy of social leveling first promised in the mid-1980s by the physical and symbolic portent of stainless steel: “I thought stainless steel would be a wonderful material, I could polish it, and I could create a fake luxury. I never wanted real luxury, instead, I wanted proletarian luxury, something visually intoxicating, disorientating” (Jeff Koons, ibid., p. 19). With Statuary, Koons both immortalised mass-market trinkets and simultaneously debased porcelain or masterfully carved marble objets d'art through transforming his carefully chosen motifs into a uniform panorama of gleaming metal. This simultaneous sublimation and desublimation operates on many levels in the present work. Evocative of the virtuosic paintings of flower vases depicted in Dutch still life paintings and Rococoesque table centrepieces, this motif also belongs to the realm of mass-produced porcelain miniatures. It is an object that straddles both High and Low art forms, and as such is a perfect Koonsian symbol for liberating the viewer from the prescribed dictates of taste.

Fully broached with Flowers and its Statuary counterparts in 1986, Koons pioneered a modified concept of the Duchampian readymade via the legacy of eighteenth-century art in contemporary culture. Working within the remit of Pop art and its embrace of consumer driven visual culture, Koons has looked to eradicate intellectual guilt and critical shame from an appreciation of mass taste. As Koons explains, “I started to focus on my dialogue about people accepting their own histories… I was just trying to say that whatever you respond to is perfect, that your history and your own cultural background are perfect… that it’s ok to give in to what you respond to” (Jeff Koons, ibid., p. 24). Through a lexicon of immediately recognisable ‘secular archetypes’ sourced from consumer goods, historical characters, and celebrity culture, Koons suspends judgment to deliver exalted meaning and big concepts. What drives this strategy is a surprisingly traditional notion of art as a form of ‘self-help,’ an understanding with its roots in the enlightenment wherein art was conceived as a vehicle for a purer sense of being and empowerment. Heir to Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Koons is the unmitigated twenty-first century successor to the Pop revolution of the 1960s. Created with the very highest level of craftsmanship and flawlessly finished in immaculately polished stainless steel, Flowers and the other Statuary sculptures were about art being used as a symbol or representation of a certain theme that takes place in art.