Jeff Koons: Ilona on Top (Rosa background) 1990. Oil inks on canvas.

Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1986.

Jeff Koons, Hanging Heart, 1994-2006.

Jeff Koons Rabbit, puhallettava lelu, 1986.

Jeff Koons, Red Balloon Flower, in foreground; Jenny Holzer, text and light installation, 7 World Trade Center lobby, Photo Aude.

Jeff Koons (American, born 1955), Coloring Book, 1997-2005, High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating, 222 x 131-1/2 x 9-1/8", Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création, © Jeff Koons.

Museum of
Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago
312-280-2660
Jeff Koons
May 31-
September 21, 2008

The contemporary artist and provocateur Jeff Koons is one of the best known and intriguing artists of the 20th century. The seductive surfaces, luxurious scale and quality, and flawless execution of his works — many of which have become icons, such as Rabbit, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, and Puppy — transform everyday objects and fantasies into high art. After presenting the first survey of Koons’ work in 1988, the MCA is revisiting the work of this seminal figure in contemporary art, exploring his powerful influence on contemporary art and his significance for a new generation.

Jeff Koons worked closely with the MCA to create a carefully selected survey focusing on his most iconic works from the 1980s to the present. The exhibition reveals relationships between the artist’s works both through and across series, surveying Koons’ career from the celebrated sculptures of the 1980s to new paintings completed in 2007. One of his most recognized recent pieces, Hanging Heart (Blue/Silver), will hang from the MCA's atrium ceiling as a centerpiece to the exhibition.

Koons mirrors society's obsession with popular culture and negates simple divisions between appearance and reality, surface and depth, and art and commodity. With roots in Pop, Conceptual, and Minimalist art, Koons models his sculptures on consumer products and manipulates store-bought items to dramatize mass-produced cultural objects while exposing the subtleties of marketing. But unlike his 1960s predecessors, Koons’ agenda is to address people’s psychological investment in consumer objects and how these objects are designed to seduce. “My work,” says Koons, “will use every possible opportunity. It will employ all possible tricks and do everything — really everything — to communicate and win the viewer over.”

The exhibition features iconic works from each of Koons' series:

Pre-New and New
“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 so 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 respect for Minimalism but to give the viewer a sense of economic security.” The first two series, Pre-New and New, draw upon the American public’s desire for new consumer products. Referencing methods of display in retail stores and museums, Koons mounted mass-produced consumer goods such as Hoover vacuum cleaners, and placed them within airtight Plexigas vitrines as if preserved artifacts. Koons elevation of everyday objects to symbols of desire explores cultural value judgments and the public’s quest for status, permanence, and “the new.”

Equilibrium
“The show was about equilibrium, and the ads defined personal and social equilibrium. There is also the deception of people acting as if they have accomplished their goals and they haven’t: "Come on! Go for it! I have achieved equilibrium!" Equilibrium is unattainable; it can be sustained only for a moment. And here are these people in the role of saying, "Come on! I’ve done it! I’m a star! I’m Moses!" It’s about artists using art for social mobility. Moses [Malone] is a symbol of the middle-class artist of our time who does the same act of deception, a front man: ‘I’ve done it! I’m a star! … And the bronzes were the tools for Equilibrium that would kill you if you used them. So the underlying theme, really, was that death is the ultimate state of being. What was paralleling this message was that white middle-class kids have been using art the same way that other ethnic groups have been using basketball — for social mobility.”

Created in 1985 for his first solo exhibition, Equilibrium, the show included
basketballs floating in display tanks, along with cast bronze lifesaving gear, a diver’s vest, an inflatable lifeboat, and a snorkel. Framed advertising posters of American basketball heroes wearing Nike clothing and surrounded by basketballs continue the artist’s examination of consumption and the desire for lasting perfection. Similar to the New series, the tanks and the bronze works cannot fulfill their intended function; however, Koons changes the objects’ materiality to make connections between objects, their economic and cultural value, and public perception.

Luxury
and Degradation
“Coming from these wombs and the masculine color of Equilibrium, all these internal areas, 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.” In this series, exhibited in 1986, Koons presents a view of consumerist decadence by appropriating images and objects related to the marketing and consumption of alcohol. Luxury and Degradation features precisely reproduced paintings of liquor advertisements and stainless steel alcohol-related items ranging from children’s toys to Baccarat Crystal sets. The series reflects a variety of consumer income levels and tastes that are united in a desire for status and power through conspicuous consumption.

Statuary
“This was to show that if you put art in the hands of a monarch, which Louis XIV was a symbol of, it would become reflective of their ego, and eventually become decorative. And if you put art in the hands of the masses, which Bob Hope was a symbol of, that eventually art would become decorative. And if you put art in the hands of Jeff Koons, it will eventually reflect my ego and also eventually become decorative.” Similar to Luxury and Degradation created the same year, Koons conceived of Statuary as a panoramic view of society. The sculptures, all made of stainless steel, draw from a range of art historical themes and sources from the bust of Louis XIV, to the figure of Bob Hope, to an inflatable bunny. For Koons, stainless steel simulates the economical security of luxurious objects. Because he aims to address the entire social spectrum with his art, he uses the democratic material of stainless steel rather than bronze or gold which historically have been materials associated with the elite social classes.

Banality
“I don’t see a Hummel figurine as tasteless, I see it as beautiful. I see it and respond to the sentimentality of the work. I love the finish, how simple the color green can be painted. I like things being seen for what they are. It’s like lying in the grass and taking a deep breath. That’s all my work is trying to do, to be as enjoyable as that breath.” The works in Koons' Banality series in 1988, made in porcelain, ceramic, or polychromed wood, draw on images and icons in popular culture and often combined people and animals with ambiguous sexual undertones such as in Pink Panther. While the series continues Koons' use of common objects in the New series and his use of kitsch in the Statuary series, Banality offers a distinct shift in scale. Enlarged, these monumental works challenge the relationship Koons questioned earlier between art and commodity, as well as between sublime art and banal taste, and valuable sculpture and cheap kitsch.

Made in Heaven
“It’s about the sense of security one has with one’s own body and the sense of being with nature itself. It’s also about the act of how we preserve the species through procreation. The Made in Heaven series has an aspect of the eternal, spiritual, and sexual. You know, there are these two poles of the eternal, the biological and the spiritual.” In 1990, Koons began Made in Heaven which combined his fascination with sexuality, the readymade, and the Baroque in a series of photographs and sculptures of himself with his former wife, Ilona Staller (La Cicciolina), the Hungarian-born porn star and member of Italian parliament. Wooden sculptures of animals, flowers, and cherubs help celebrate the couple’s rapturous sexual union and Koons’ ideas about procreation as the ultimate goal of mankind.

Celebration
“My son was born on October 1992. Immediately I became interested in a lot of images I came across, the packaging of toys, a playful rabbit — things that I enjoyed again. I had used a lot of these images in the past. I started the celebration series without a title. My son used to come into the studio while I was working on Hanging Heart. Then he was abducted, and my ex-wife later kidnapped him. So the work fell into an area where I felt that I wanted my son to feel how much I was thinking of him.” Celebration, begun in 1994, has been the artist’s longest running series. Based on commercialized celebratory events held throughout the calendar year, such as holidays or birthdays, the sculptures and paintings depict toys, baubles, and childhood themes blown up to fantastical proportions, such as the ten-foot-tall, one ton, stainless steel Balloon Dog. Their grand scale, intoxicating surfaces, and extraordinary production standards aim to communicate archetypal ideas of beauty, pleasure, and survival. In making the familiar beautiful, as in his entire oeuvre, Koons aspires to reflect the viewers’ tastes and in doing so encourage the viewers’ faith in themselves and their taste.

Easy-Fun | Ethereal
“Now, when you’re working on a painting, a surface can present itself somewhat to you, but it wasn’t something that directed me for completion of an image. I knew the surface I wanted: the whole idea of the Ethereal paintings was to have a little bit of a blur, the sense of a photograph, not having edges defined so sharply — a little bit of a sense of a snapshot, something you may take with your own camera.” The paintings in this series mix texture, abstraction, advertising, and food within a hyperrealistic fantastical montage of layered forms. Drawing from a whirlwind of historical and pop cultural references, the paintings celebrate Koons’ ongoing interest in the Baroque and Rococo use of spiritual ecstasy and sensual excess as a tool for enlightenment.

Popeye
“I thought it was very archetypal. All these pieces play a lot with male and female aspects.” In this series, Koons uses collage to create brightly hued paintings drawn from advertising, and cast-aluminum sculptures based on inflatable bathing and beach toys. Like the Celebration series, these sculptures and paintings draw on the interplay between ideas of childhood innocence and adult sexuality. In contrast to other series where the choice of material is evident, these sculptures appear to be made of plastic but are actually cast in aluminum. Similarly, despite the paintings’ deceptive hyperrealism, a comprehensive understanding of them is made impossible by the many layers of montage.

Hulk Elvis
“I remember coming across the Hulk in different stores and not having [an] interest, and then I was at an amusement fair and saw a Hulk hung up, and all of a sudden it hit me that this is really a very global-type image, this Hulk is performing like an Eastern god, a guardian god, a protector, and this was a very global-type archetype. And to be able to connect it to the sense of arrogant masculinity and to connect it to Eastern guardian gods … And when these things came together I began to have an interest in these paintings. What I’ve enjoyed is to look at the Hulk and I think have the viewer look at the Hulk, and have it transformed into Warhol’s Elvis. And I call it Hulk Elvis to make a reference to this type of masculinity of Andy’s Elvis. Even though the Hulk doesn’t have a gun pointing at you, it still has this type of masculinity.” This series of large paintings combines figurative and abstract elements manipulated and collaged into spectacular pictorial arrangements. Brightly colored images and contours of the Incredible Hulk, the Liberty Bell, and landscapes appear and recede through the paintings’ multiple layers of realism and abstraction. In these visually complex paintings, Koons furthers the Popeye series in its exuberant presentation of image, color, texture, and detail.

Koons has a strong connection to Chicago where he came in the 1970s to study at the School of the Art Institute under artists Ed Paschke and Jim Nutt and briefly worked at the MCA as a preparator. For Koons, this was a critical time in his development — what he calls a period of transcendence. In practical terms, working for and befriending the artist Ed Paschke taught him that he could be a professional artist. Koons began to see his ideas in dialogue with Dada, Surrealism, and the Chicago Imagists, all genres that communicate with personal icons: from Salvador Dali’s mustache to Paschke’s tattoo parlors. Through Paschke and others, he looked to the external world to find his personal iconography, which he used to explore his subjectivity, transcend his limits, and fulfill his potential as an artist.

The exhibition is guest curated by Francesco Bonami, Artistic Director of the Fondazione Sandretto ReRebaudengo and Pitti Immagine Discovery. It is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue, with an essay by Bonami and an interview by MCA Curator Lynne Warren focusing on Koons’ Chicago roots and his links to artists such as Ed Paschke, Jim Nutt, H.C. Westermann, and others.

Jeff Koons, Ushering in Banality, 1988. Courtesy The Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens. © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, Triple Hulk Elvis I, 2007. Collection of William J. Bell. © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, Lifeboat, 1985. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Gerald S. Elliott Collection. © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, Naked, 1988. Collection of Stephanie Seymour Brant, courtesy The Stephanie and Peter Brant Foundation, Greenwich, CT. © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, Bourgeois Bust – Jeff and Ilona, 1991. Collection of Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson. © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, Elvis, 2003. Collection of Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson. © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, Woman in Tub, 1988. The Art Institute of Chicago, Stefan T. Edlis Collection, © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, New Hoover Deluxe Shampoo Polishers, New Shelton Wet/Dry 10-gallon Displaced Tripledecker, 1981-1987. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Gerald S. Elliott Collection. © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1986. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Partial gift of Stefan T. Edlis and H. Gael Neeson. © Jeff Koons.

Jeff Koons, Ilona's Asshole, 1991. Private collection. © Jeff Koons.

Jim Nutt, Summer Salt, 1970. MCA Collection, gift of Dennis Adrian in honor of Claire B. Zeisler.

Ed Paschke, Red Sweeney, 1975. Private collection. Photo courtesy of the Ed Paschke Foundation, San Francisco. © 1975 Ed Paschke.

Museum of
Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago
312-280-2660
Everything's Here:
Jeff Koons and
His Experience
of Chicago
June 14-
October 26, 2008

Jeff Koons, subject of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago’s featured summer exhibition, was inspired and influenced by Chicago artists. Everything’s Here serves as a companion to the Koons exhibition and presents a glimpse of the back-story of one of the best known, intriguing artists of the 20th century. The exhibition includes works by artists drawn mostly from the MCA Collection who influenced Koons during his formative years as a young artist in Chicago.

Chicago served as the setting for Koons’s significant artistic development. He encountered the work of Jim Nutt in the MCA-organized 1974 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York upon which he was greatly impressed and challenged to explore new paths for his own work. Koons attended the School of the Art Institute (SAIC) in 1975-76 on a student mobility program at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, where he received his BFA. He also was an art handler and preparator at MCA during his studies at SAIC.

Koons was also richly inspired by the work of his mentor Ed Paschke, who is often considered the most prominent of the generation of Chicago-based artists who are collectively known as the Chicago Imagists. Koons served as a studio assistant to Paschke, whose works are represented in depth in Everything’s Here with paintings from the 1970s. Koons’s relationship to Paschke is also reflected in the exhibition’s title. In Paschke’s 2005 eulogy Koons said, “Ed taught me that everything’s here, and you just have to look for it, that it’s just here. This is the most generous thing that I think that someone can give, that, ‘it’s just here,’ you just open your eyes and all these metaphysical connections can occur.”

H.C. Westermann was also an inspirational figure for Koons, so much so that his woodblock print The Dance of Death is featured in Koons’ Elvis, a painting from 2003 that is on view in the Jeff Koons exhibition. The original woodblock from Westermann’s The Connecticut Ballroom suite is also featured, along with several sculptures, including Death Ship of No Port, 1957.

Other featured artists, all part of the Chicago Imagists community, include Roger Brown, Robert Lostutter, Karl Wirsum, and Christina Ramberg. Many of these works are from the 1970s when the Imagists first captured widespread public attention. Everything’s Here is organized by MCA Curator Lynne Warren.

Ed Paschke, Elcina, 1973. MCA Collection, gift of Albert J. Bildner. © 1973 Ed Paschke.

Jim Nutt, Summer Salt, 1970. MCA Collection, gift of Dennis
Adrian in honor of Claire B. Zeisler.