Jeff Koons
New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Blue; New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Blue; Doubledecker
1981–1987
Not on view
Date
1981–1987
Classification
Sculpture
Medium
Four vacuum cleaners, acrylic, and fluorescent lights
Dimensions
Overall: 116 × 41 × 28in. (294.6 × 104.1 × 71.1 cm)
Accession number
89.30a-k
Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase, with funds from The Sondra and Charles Gilman, Jr. Foundation, Inc., and the Painting and Sculpture Committee
Rights and reproductions
© Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons began his artistic career in the 1980s by emphasizing the conspicuous consumption that defined the era. He made his mark in the art world with a 1980 exhibition in the window of the New Museum in New York, titled The New, in which New Hoover Convertibles was included. With an irony reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp, who in 1917 exhibited a urinal as a work of art, Koons placed brand-new, store-bought vacuum cleaners in a sterile, fluorescent-lit vitrine that protects them from the dirt and grime they are designed to remove. By thoroughly transforming the expected context and use of the vacuum cleaners, and by raising domestic appliances to the realm of fine art, Koons makes us question not only our assumptions of what constitutes art, but society’s obsession with cleanliness, efficiency, and newness. “I don’t seek to make consumer icons,” Koons explained, “but to decode why and how consumer objects are glorified.”
