Jeff Koons: A Retrospective
June 27–Oct 19, 2014
Banality
6
Expanding on the lowbrow subjects of Statuary, Koons’s next series, Banality, ventured further into the realm of kitsch. Unlike his earlier sculptures based on readymade sources, those in Banality are mash-ups of stuffed animals, gift shop figurines, and images taken from magazines, product packaging, films, and even Leonardo da Vinci. Nothing was too corny, too cloying, or too cute. Working with traditional German and Italian craftsmen who made decorative and religious objects, Koons enlarged his subjects and rendered them in gilt porcelain and polychromed wood, materials more associated with housewares and tchotchkes than contemporary art. As with his previous series, he conceived of Banality as an elaborate allegory, this one aimed at freeing us to embrace without embarrassment our childhood affection for toys or the trinkets lining our grandparents’ shelves.
Amore, 1988
Jeff Koons, Amore, 1988. Porcelain; 32 x 20 x 20 in. (81.3 x 50.8 x 50.8 cm). Lehmann-Art Ltd. © Jeff Koons
This porcelain sculpture depicts a Cabbage Patch Kid dressed in a bear costume to which Koons has added a heart sticker, a pot of jam, and other decorative elements. Such dolls were popular in the 1980s among children and adult collectors but in Koons’s hands the soft and loveable plush toy becomes a cold and hard statue. “Everything here is a metaphor for the viewer’s guilt and shame,” he commented. “Art can be a horrible discriminator. It can be used either to be uplifting and to give self-empowerment or to debase people and disempower them. And on the tightrope in between, there’s one’s cultural history. These images are aspects from my own, but everybody’s cultural history is perfect, it can’t be anything other than what it is—absolute perfection. <i>Banality</i> was the embracement of that.”