Jeff Koons: A Retrospective

The works in Luxury and Degradation address the marketing and consumption of alcohol to raise questions about the relationships among advertising, class, vice, and art. Canvases printed with oil-based inks make artworks out of liquor ads, while Koons further seduces viewers with shiny stainless-steel casts of vessels and accessories for serving alcohol. “I thought stainless steel would be a wonderful material,” he remarked. “I could polish it, and I could create a fake luxury. I never wanted real luxury, instead, I wanted proletarian luxury, something visually intoxicating, disorienting.” If in his previous series Koons largely employed objects that had practical functions, here he points to the “degradation” of being in thrall to things primarily intended to decorate our lives and confer social status—or at least nurture fantasies of it.