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May 13 – September 2, 2012

The Fondation Beyeler is presenting the first exhibition ever devoted by a Swiss museum to the American artist Jeff Koons (b. 1955). Koons, likely the best-known living artist, has for decades been causing a furore with the combination of popular and high culture that informs his art.

Our extensive presentation focuses on three central series of works – The New, Banality and Celebration – which represent crucial stages in Koons’s development and lead to the nucleus of his thinking and creative activity. The New comprises the ready-made-like cleaning appliances of his early period, symbols of newness and purity. Banality includes those traditionally crafted sculptures in porcelain and wood which have since become (post-)modern icons. Finally, in the Celebration series, on which Koons has been working for almost twenty years, appear high-gloss steel sculptures of unique material perfection, and large-format paintings in which the artist celebrates childhood in a veritably baroque way. Koons’s equally spectacular and subtle works are repeatedly concerned with themes such as innocence, beauty, sexuality and happiness. These reflect his conception of an art that is accessible to every viewer.

Room Guide

The New

From early on in his career, Jeff Koons has created his works in closed series to which he has given their own titles. The first series that he planned as such from the start is entitled The New. Koons conceived the works in this series between 1980 and 1982, although their production continued until 1987. The first room in the exhibition is entirely dedicated to this early series, which occupies a crucial place in Koons’s artistic development..

 
New Hoover Convertible, 1980, Vacuum cleaner, acrylic, and fluorescent lights, 142,2 x 57,2 x 57,2 cm, Rubell Family Collection, Miami © Jeff Koons. Foto: Jeff Koons Studio / Douglas M. Parker Studio, Los Angeles

New Hoover Convertible, 1980

The series entitled The New is dominated by brand new cleaning appliances which are displayed lying or standing on fluorescent lights in cube-shaped Plexiglas showcases. The showcases, which are presented singly or stacked on top of another, vary in size according to the number, type and positioning of the vacuum cleaners and/or shampoo polishers. Through the severity of their presentation and the use of neon tubes, these works evoke the reductive clarity of Minimal Art. As objects, Koons’s explicitly unused and therefore immaculate cleaning appliances embody "ideal newness", standing for eternity and purity, like the portrait of the young artist in The New Jeff Koons.

 
New Shelton Wet/Drys Tripledecker, 1981. Three vacuum cleaners, acrylic, and fluorescent lights, 316.2 x 71.1 x 71.1 cm, Des Moines Art Center Permanent Collections, erworben mit dem Erlös aus dem Verkauf einer Schenkung von Roy Halston Frowick, 1991 © Jeff Koons. Foto: Jeff Koons Studio, New York

New Shelton Wet/Drys Tripledecker, 1981

Although his cleaning appliances were originally created as functional commercial objects, Koons does not simply present them as lifeless goods in coffin-like showcases. Instead he endows them with a kind of biological, living quality, seeing them as "breathing machines". Inspired by the forms of the tubes and apertures, Koons also highlights the bisexual characteristics of the cleaning appliances, through which they in turn become a metaphor for original intactness. In Koons’s work, the cleaning appliances also symbolise the ideal of the reconciliation of opposites, as is emphasised by the model description "Wet/Dry" that features on some appliances’ casing and that is also included in the title of certain works.

Banality

In 1988 Koons created his groundbreaking series entitled Banality, which was exhibited simultaneously in galleries in Cologne, New York and Chicago. In contrast to the series The New, in which he had still worked with minimalistically staged objects, he finally switched over to sculpture in Banality, while tending to orient his work more towards a Baroque popular aesthetic. With his much-remarked Banality series, Koons not only placed the concept of art on a new foundation but finally also became a star on the international art scene. As a series, Banality consists of twenty sculptural figures of which every last detail was conceived by the artist. In an edition consisting of three unique versions and an artist’s proof, Koons had his sculptures created by professional artisans who signed each work very visibly with their name, while his signature was placed beneath the sculpture. As a group, the Banality figures form an extensive panorama in which Koons’s artistic programme finds its expression: "In Banality, I was trying to tell people to have a sense of security in their own past, to embrace their own past. This was the most direct way that I started to speak about people not letting art be a segregator

 
Ushering in Banality, 1988. Polychromed wood, 96,5 x 157,5 x 76,2 cm, private collection © Jeff Koons. Photo: Schaub/Höffner, Köln / © TASCHEN GmbH

Ushering in Banality, 1988

The key idea of the Banality series – that apparent banality can induce self-acceptance in viewers – finds particularly clear expression in the seminal polychrome wooden sculpture Ushering in Banality. As the work’s title indicates, a pig is being "ushered" into banality by two cherubs and a small boy, while itself becoming a symbol for the "banality" into which the observer is ushered. In his work, Koons not only gives the concept of banality a positive twist, but even elevates it to a fundamental artistic ideal. It is far from coincidental that the artist has identified himself with the red-clad boy behind the pig, who stands for the complicity between men and animals that typifies many of the works in the Banality series. With Ushering in Banality, as with the The New Jeff Koons, it is the artist as a child who points the way.

 
Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988. Porcelain, 106,7 x 179,1 x 82,6 cm, The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica © Jeff Koons. Photo: Jeff Koons Studio / Douglas M. Parker Studio, Los Angeles

Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988

Jeff Koons’ legendary porcelain work Michael Jackson and Bubbles, described by him as a contemporary Pietà, has today itself become a post-modern icon. The superstar who has been exalted to a monument is shown posing in the work, surrounded by golden roses, heroically like a modern Orpheus. His chimpanzee Bubbles is resting on his lap, looking as artificial as its human counterpart. In his ambivalence, Michael Jackson stands for the elimination of sexual, ethnic, aesthetic and social distinctions in one person, thereby corresponding to Koons’s ideal of an “anti-discriminatory” art reconciling all opposites, through which he attempts to reach the largest possible audience.

 
Pink Panther, 1988. porcelain, 104,1 x 52,1 x 48,3 cm, Courtesy The Brant Foundation, Greenwich, Connecticut © Jeff Koons. Photo: Schaub/Höffner, Köln / © TASCHEN GmbH

Pink Panther, 1988

The porcelain figure Pink Panther, which is reminiscent of a pin-up girl, belongs to those works which Koons, as he himself has put it, based on the motif of "masturbation as a metaphor for cultural guilt and shame". The artist tries to liberate viewers from such feelings of guilt and shame by challenging them to stand up for their suppressed aesthetic preferences. Pink Panther is also a particularly vivid expression of the formal and compositional interest of Koons’s approach to sculpture. With its charged erotic relationship between woman and animal, Pink Panther is particularly striking because of the multiple viewpoints from which we can see its dynamically twisted figure, a feature derived from the Mannerist tradition of the figura serpentinata.

Celebration

Originally conceived as a small project for a calendar, Celebration has since developed into Koons’s most elaborate series to date. From 1994 onwards, Koons was involved for many years in this massive project, which consists of monumental sculptures made of polyethylene or high chromium stainless steel as well as large-format oil paintings. The history of the creation of Celebration is closely tied up with events in Koons’s family life, particularly the birth of his son Ludwig Maximilian in 1992. In its character as a feast of the childlike, the Celebration series can also be seen as a token of the father’s love for the son who was taken away from him.

 
Balloon Dog (Red), 1994–2000. High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating, 307,3 x 363,2 x 114,3 cm, Private Collection, Europa © Jeff Koons. Photo: Jeff Koons Studio, New York

Balloon Dog (Red), 1994–2000

Air-filled objects have interested Koons from the beginning of his career, as is demonstrated by his use of vacuum cleaners in his early works. Numerous works in the Celebration series are inspired by the balloon figures modelled by street clowns. In Balloon Dog (Red), for example, Koons transforms a delicate, transient balloon dog into a huge archetypal dog made of durable stainless steel that Koons himself describes as a "Trojan horse". In its perfect execution, Balloon Dog (Red) is remarkable for the illusionism of its material – the sculpture looks soft and lightweight but is actually hard and weighs several tons.

 
Play-Doh, 1995–2007. Oil on canvas, 333,4 x 282,5 cm, Collection of the Artist © Jeff Koons. Photo: Jeff Koons Studio, New York

Play-Doh, 1995–2007

With the Celebration series, Koons accomplishes the actual transition to painting, which is placed on an equal footing with sculpture for the first time in his career. Most of the large-format Celebration paintings, including the masterly Play-Doh, are based on the same basic compositional principle: the central pictorial subject is displayed in front of draped glossy foil, in which individual parts of the object, generally distorted, are seductively reflected many times over. The Celebration paintings are inspired by actual arrangements of objects assembled by the artist himself. These motifs are subsequently photographed and reworked before being carefully transferred to the canvas in a significantly enlarged format. Aesthetically, the paintings catch the eye due to their "objective" or even hyper-realistic impact, although the canvas, following the principle of "painting by numbers", is divided into colour fields that are rigorously separated from each other. In Play-Doh, Koons transforms a motif taken from childhood into a powerful, sensuous spectacle in which the repeatedly reflected figure seems to dissolve into an almost abstract colour composition.

 
Hanging Heart (Gold/Magenta), 1994–2006.High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating, 291 x 280 x 101,5 cm, Collection of the Artist © Jeff Koons. Photo: Jeff Koons Studio, New York

Hanging Heart (Gold/Magenta), 1994–2006

The works in the Celebration series emphasise familiar decorative items that, through material transformation and rescaling, are elevated to monumental sculptures made of high chromium stainless steel. These items include gift articles for Christmas and St. Valentine’s Day, such as that which inspired the extremely symbolic work Hanging Heart. Other subjects in this series can be linked with different highpoints in the holiday calendar, for example Cracked Egg with Easter. In their symbolism, these motifs often evoke timeless themes like love, life and transience.

 
Balloon Flower (Blue), 1995–2000. High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating, 340 x 285 x 260 cm, Private collection, installed at Berower Park at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel© Jeff Koons. Photo montage: Jeff Koons Studio, New York

Balloon Flower (Blue), 1995–2000

Flowers are a leitmotiv in Koons’s art – a traditional symbol of beauty, life and transience. The artist adds an erotic dimension that is typical of him. This is true of the virtuoso stainless steel sculpture Balloon Flower (Blue). The simple but ambivalent forms of the flowers contain both male and female characteristics. An idea already thematised by the vacuum cleaners in The New and by a number of the Banality figures is therefore once again expressed here. The surrounding space and the viewer are reflected in the impeccable, seductively shiny surfaces of Tulips and Balloon Flower (Blue), thus entering into a direct relationship with the work of art. Balloon Flower (Blue) seems to be swimming on the surface of the water, achieving a wonderfully weightless effect in the setting of the pond.

Jeff Koons at Fondation Beyeler. Introduction by Senior Curator Theodora Vischer.

Jeff Koons at Fondation Beyeler. Introduction by Curator Theodora Vischer and walk-through of the exhibition.

«Split-Rocker» - Interview with Jeff Koons

 

Interview with the American artist Jeff Koons on the occasion of his solo exhibition at Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland. The exhibition runs until September 2, 2012. Jeff Koons talks about the idea behind Split-Rocker and what's special about the Split-Rocker in the park of the Fondation Beyeler.

Split-Rocker at the Fondation Beyeler from May until autumn 2012.

Split-Rocker, a colossal floral sculpture by the American artist Jeff Koons (b. 1955), comprising thousands and thousands of real plants, will be on view in the Fondation Beyeler park. The sculpture continues the compelling dialogue between art and nature that has become so characteristic of the Fondation Beyeler. Split-Rocker was first installed in 2000, in the cloister of the Palais des Papes in Avignon, then again a few years later in the gardens of Versailles (2008). Now Split- Rocker has begun to flourish in Riehen.

For his floral sculpture, Koons proceeded from two different rocker motifs, a pony and a dinosaur, whose heads he cut in half and then reassembled. Since the halves do not coincide, gaps are formed at certain places which open the sculpture out and transform it into an architecture that offers refuges. A disassembled and differently reassembled figure that simultaneously looks forward and to the side, Split-Rocker relates to the Cubism of Picasso while at the same time turning it in an entirely new direction. As a floral outdoor sculpture, the piece also continues the tradition of Baroque garden art and the topiary gardening still seen today in popular amusement parks.

With the combination of pony and dinosaur, Split-Rocker embodies that confrontation of opposites that is also expressed in the notion of a "monstrous" , gigantic children's toy. Yet the artist chooses transitory flowers, of all things, as the material for a monument that promises duration. It is not least in this special interplay of supposed opposites that the true tension and force of Koons's art lie.

The Split-Rocker project was made possible by the generous support of JTI.

Split-Rocker, 2000/2012, at the Fondation Beyeler, Photo: Andri Pol

Catalogue «Jeff Koons»

Three major groups of works by Jeff Koons exemplify his artistry

The inimitable works of art by Jeff Koons (*1955 in York, Pennsylvania), one of the most famous artists in the world today, have been causing uproars since the eighties. This publication is an in-depth examination of three major groups of works: The New (1980–87), Banality (1988), and Celebration (ongoing since 1994), each one of which represents a spectacular and consequential phase in Koons’s oeuvre. Ready-made objects from The New are transformed in Banality into wondrous, provocative sculptures created with traditional craftsmanship. A few years later, painting and sculpture appeared on an even par in Celebration. Hence, these three influential, manifesto-like stages are capable of providing insight into the work and ideas of Jeff Koons.

With a conversation between Jeff Koons and Theodora Vischer as well as essays by Raphaël Bouvier and Günther Vogt.

Edited by Fondation Beyeler, 2012, 212 pp., c. 80 ills., ca. 70 in color, 24.5 x 30.5 cm The cover was designed by Jeff Koons.

Order Catalogue

Jeff Koons, 2012, Photo: Chris Fanning

Biography

Jeff Koons (*1955, in Pennsylvania)

1955 Jeff Koons is born in York, Pennsylvania, where he spends his childhood.

1972-76 Studies art and design at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. In 1975 he spends an exchange year at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The following year he leaves Chicago for New York.

1977 Koons works at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquiring new museum members. Until 1979 he develops his first series of works, consisting of combined ready-mades in which inflatable figures are placed on and in front of mirrors.

1979 Begins to work with household appliances, which he affixes to fluorescent lamps for a series later titled Pre-New. Executes first work with a vacuum cleaner. Koons is employed as a broker on Wall Street in order to finance the production of his art.

1980 Koons installs his first show in the display window of the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, out of which he will develop the series The New.

1983 Sketches the first water tanks for the Equilibrium series.

1985 Koons has his first true one-person show, at the gallery International With Monument, New York.

1986 The series Luxury and Degradation and Statuary emerge, all of the sculptures of which consist of stainless chrome steel.

1987 Koons is invited to "Skulptur Projekte Münster" in Germany, and creates Kiepenkerl in stainless chrome steel.

1988 Koons's new series, Banality, is simultaneously shown in three distinguished galleries in Cologne, New York and Chicago. The porcelain and wood figures mystify the critics.

1991 The Made in Heaven series is shown in Cologne and New York. The works, showing the artist making love with Ilona Staller, alias Cicciolina, are largely panned by the critics. Koons and Staller marry.

1992 Koons creates the monumental floral sculpture Puppy in front of the castle in Bad Arolson near Kassel. Large museum retrospectives are held in Amsterdam, Stuttgart, San Francisco, and Minneapolis.

1993 Inspired by his little son, Ludwig Maximilian, Koons develops the extensive series Celebration, comprising colored chrome steel and polyethelene sculptures and paintings. Koons separates from Ilona Staller, and a protracted struggle for custody of their son begins.

1999 Koons begins a new series, Easyfun, comprising paintings and wall-mounted sculptures.

2000 Designs Split-Rocker, his second floral sculpture, which is first shown at the Palais des Papes in Avignon. He begins a new series of paintings, Easyfun-Ethereal.

2002 A new series of sculptures and paintings, Popeye, is commenced. Koons weds Justine Wheeler.

2004 Koons is honored with retrospectives in New York, Oslo and Helsinki.

2006 Begins working on a new series, Hulk Elvis.

2008 Large-scale exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Berlin, and in the Palace of Versailles, are devoted to Koons. He starts working on the new series Antiquity.

2012 The Fondation Beyeler stages the first exhibition of Koons’ work ever held in a Swiss museum, soon to be followed by a Koons exhibition in Frankfurt am Main.