Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Metallic Venus - Jeff Koons

Metallic Venus
Jeff Koons
2010-2012
Mirror-polished Stainless Steel with Transparent Color Coating, Live Plants
100 x 52 x 40 in
Musee de L'Art Modernes
Paris, France


            Jeff Koons is a contemporary artist from Pennsylvania who seeks to enlighten others on the human experience and sources of shame, pleasure, and life patterns.  Inspired by American pop-culture and minimalism, his work started as cheap displays that exemplified grander schemes.  Koons’s earliest art was plastic inflatables and appliances from a store that he coordinated to reflect an aspect of human life.  As Koons developed his style, he began to imitate historical styles from Baroque, Classical, Paleolithic, and other periods. 
            Koons’s oeuvre appeals to a wealthy crowd of art connoisseurs.  Koons would develop a series of art displays connected by a common theme.  His first series was called Inflatables.  In this display Koons related inflatable animals to humans because “…objects that contain air….are very anthropomorphic.”  Koons soon developed an extremely minimalistic style.  His most famous work of art is Hanging Heart, part of his Celebration series.  This piece sold for a record-breaking $23.6 million.  For this reason, Koons is able to use edge-cutting technology to create his masterpieces. 
            In 2007, Koons began a series that reflected on the use of art throughout history.  One of the pieces in this series is the Metallic Venus.  This statue is based on a Roman statue Callipygian Venus, informally known as Venus of the beautiful buttocks.  This statue was excavated in Rome and is believed to be the Roman copy of a Greek original dating to 300-400 B.C.  This statue had to be restored several times, and because of this is somewhat discontinuous and disproportionate.  
            Koons designed his own Venus statue as a variation of the original with different materials to emphasize the modernity of the piece.  Metallic Venus was created using computer-aided imaging and cutting of stainless steel.  This material and method of formation provides the statue with a surreal sheen that, when looked into, reflects the viewers face.  This represents the role that art plays in the modern art world.  Koons wanted to say that people value art as a reflection of themselves. 
            The new Venus also lifts her shirt up above her head in a very modern sort of way.  Koons demonstrates the role of eroticism in human life despite the changes in methods.  In fact, eroticism and sex are prominent themes in Koons’s work.  Koons wanted sex to be seen merely as a primal instinct of humans and useful for pleasure and procreation without shame.  He presents eroticism as part of this primal rite.  Koons added live flowers to the display in order to demonstrate the importance of procreation to sustain life. 

            Koons’s genius is his recognition of the change that has taken place in how humans display risqué beauty. It is essential to understand the societies from which these statues came in order to grasp how these statues demonstrate eroticism within their respective cultures.  While both Metallic Venus and Callipygian Venus are statues of the Roman god Venus, they display different parts of the human narrative.  What Koons did with Metallic Venus was unify the present human experience with that of the past.

Report by Benjamin Mills - 2015

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