Jeff Koons: A Retrospective
June 27–Oct 19, 2014
Inflatables and Pre-New
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Koons moved to New York in 1977 after completing his studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While there he had been making paintings inspired by his dreams and the work of his hero Salvador Dalí. In New York, he took a job selling memberships at the Museum of Modern Art, where he encountered recent Conceptual Art and the readymades of Marcel Duchamp. For Koons, these unaltered industrial products—a urinal or shovel—engaged the everyday world more directly than the images he had painted from his fantasies. His first experiments with the readymade involved the cheap inflatables he found scouring novelty shops in downtown Manhattan. He used these toys to turn his East Village apartment into a riotous installation and to make sculptures that explore the fetishes and other irrational forces driving consumer culture.
Teapot, 1979
Jeff Koons, Teapot, 1979. Teapot, plastic tubes, and fluorescent lights; 26 x 9 x 13 in. (66 x 22.9 x 33 cm). The Sonnabend Collection, Nina Sundell, and Antonio Homem. © Jeff Koons
With their colorful lights and floating appliances, <i>Pre-New</i> wall reliefs like this one at first appear like props from a science-fiction film. Upon closer examination, however, it becomes clear that they feature prosaic household products, which Koons has lent a glamorous aura. Drawing together Pop art’s interest in the everyday and Surrealism’s involvement with the mysterious, these sculptures elevate the humble servants of the home to the point of becoming devotional icons. Yet while making these reliefs, the artist still feared he was not respectful enough of his subjects and that he was violating their “integrity” by gluing and bolting them to their supports. These sculptures became known as <i>Pre-New</i> because they preceded <i>The New</i>. In that series, Koons discovered ways to present his chosen appliances while leaving them entirely inviolate, thereby stressing the inherent perfection of his readymade sources.