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
Report by Benjamin Mills - 2015
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