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拍品专文
Jeff Koons’s New Hoover Celebrity IV, New Hoover Convertible, New Shelton 5 Gallon Wet/Dry, New Shelton 10 Gallon Wet/Dry Doubledecker represents modern domesticity as a sleek ultra-modern reliquary. Here, Koons has carefully selected four unique vacuum cleaners, showcased within a double-decker museum-style vitrine, to stand as saintly trophies of cleanliness and order. Illuminated by cool, almost clinical, fluorescent lights, Koons’s construct elevates these commonplace objects to the status of high art, underscoring society’s obsession with the new.
The present work is perhaps the most impressive of Koons’s iconic series, The New, which marked the beginning of his career in the early 1980s. Here, Koons juxtaposed readymade sculpture and billboards to blend the worlds of advertising, commerce, and high culture. Works from the now-legendary series can be found in museums worldwide, including the New Shelton Wet/Drys 10 Gallon, Doubledecker (1981) housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Blue; New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Blue; Doubledecker (1981-87) at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Readymade collides with Minimalism in the present work; Koons’s use of fluorescent tubes recalls Dan Flavin’s light sculptures and the towering sculpture of a Donald Judd stack, while the found vacuum cleaners take their cue from the modern master Marcel Duchamp. Throughout his practice, Koons — like Duchamp — elevates commonplace objects into legitimate subjects for art. Koons, who first began to fully understand the work of Duchamp while working at the Museum of Modern Art in the late 1970s, was inspired by the directness of the readymade and its capability to favor ideas over formal qualities. Since then, Koons has repeatedly turned to objects that help to narrow the traditional division between popular culture and art. He often emphasized that his work is inclusive, stating “I have always tried to create work which does not alienate any part of my audience” (J. Koons, quoted in The Jeff Koons Handbook, New York 1992, p.44).
While Duchamp often relied upon the conceptual or academic nature of a museum or gallery to assist with the recontextualization of his Readymades, Koons’s sculptures from The New are ennobled within their pristine vitrines and the episodic content of his series, making this elevation of subject matter more inherent to the work. “Coming out of a Duchampian background, I am concerned with the object and with transformation,” Koons has explained. “I transform the content of a chosen object by putting it in a specific context. I control the new content through the support mechanisms. I use billboard ads, the juxtaposition of the object with the other objects, as well as the actual process of transformation I put the object through. This recodifies the object so that it gives off the kind of information I would like people to view” (J. Koons, “Interview with McCollum and Koons,” Flash Art, 1987, n.p.)
In Koons’s artistic realm, the vacuum cleaner takes on multiple meanings designed to encourage viewers to reflect upon themselves. “These works present ideal newness,” Koons has explained. “The whole philosophy of my work maintains that the individual just needs self-confidence in life. Self-confidence that is enough — that they can display themselves, use the abilities that they have. They can do it with a new car. They can do it with a vacuum cleaner. They can do it with a chair. They can do very well in life. They just have to do it with themselves” (J. Koons, quoted in "Interview with Anthony Hayden-Guest," reproduced in A. Muthesius, ed. Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, pp. 16-17). In the context of The New, Koons’s vacuum cleaners are depicted as inanimate secular saints — fetishes and everyday objects that have transcended their original purpose, suggesting a potential path to redemption.
For Koons, the vacuum cleaner serves as a compelling artifact that engages with a broad spectrum of themes foundational to his artistic philosophy. Before his Banality series explored sexuality, and even before the more overtly explicit Made in Heaven, Koons subtly introduced related motifs through pieces like the present work. He explained his choice of the vacuum cleaner by noting its anthropomorphic qualities: it […] displays both male and female sexuality. It has orifices and phallic attachments. I have always tried to create work which does not alienate any part of my audience” (J. Koons, quoted in A. Muthesius, Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 49).
Further elaborating on the theme of anthropomorphism, Koons has referred to these vacuum cleaners as “breathing machines,” explaining that he “always liked that quality of being like lungs. When you come into the world, the first thing you did is breathe to be able to live” (J. Koons, quoted in H. W. Holzwarth, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 2009, p. 112). This idea of breath, already prevalent in his 1970s readymade series Inflatables, runs like a constant thread through Koons’s oeuvre—from his Equilibrium series to the colorful balloon flowers and animals featured in his recent Celebration sculptures. Breath sustains us and is essential to our existence; in Koons's philosophy, art holds similar significance. At the same time, air is invisible, weightless, intangible, and ephemeral, akin to Duchamp’s 50cc of Paris Air from 1919, housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Mixing Koons’s philosophies on desire, commercialism, and sexuality, The New investigates the vacant world of consumerism with an epic and mythic and immortal sense of possibility and meaning. “In the body of work I called The New, I was interested in a psychological state tied to newness and immortality,” Koons explained. “[The] gestalt came directly from viewing an inanimate object — a vacuum cleaner — that was in a position to be immortal” (J. Koons, quoted in S. Coles & R. Violette, ed., The Jeff Koons Handbook, London, 1992, p. 48).
The present work is perhaps the most impressive of Koons’s iconic series, The New, which marked the beginning of his career in the early 1980s. Here, Koons juxtaposed readymade sculpture and billboards to blend the worlds of advertising, commerce, and high culture. Works from the now-legendary series can be found in museums worldwide, including the New Shelton Wet/Drys 10 Gallon, Doubledecker (1981) housed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Blue; New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Blue; Doubledecker (1981-87) at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Readymade collides with Minimalism in the present work; Koons’s use of fluorescent tubes recalls Dan Flavin’s light sculptures and the towering sculpture of a Donald Judd stack, while the found vacuum cleaners take their cue from the modern master Marcel Duchamp. Throughout his practice, Koons — like Duchamp — elevates commonplace objects into legitimate subjects for art. Koons, who first began to fully understand the work of Duchamp while working at the Museum of Modern Art in the late 1970s, was inspired by the directness of the readymade and its capability to favor ideas over formal qualities. Since then, Koons has repeatedly turned to objects that help to narrow the traditional division between popular culture and art. He often emphasized that his work is inclusive, stating “I have always tried to create work which does not alienate any part of my audience” (J. Koons, quoted in The Jeff Koons Handbook, New York 1992, p.44).
While Duchamp often relied upon the conceptual or academic nature of a museum or gallery to assist with the recontextualization of his Readymades, Koons’s sculptures from The New are ennobled within their pristine vitrines and the episodic content of his series, making this elevation of subject matter more inherent to the work. “Coming out of a Duchampian background, I am concerned with the object and with transformation,” Koons has explained. “I transform the content of a chosen object by putting it in a specific context. I control the new content through the support mechanisms. I use billboard ads, the juxtaposition of the object with the other objects, as well as the actual process of transformation I put the object through. This recodifies the object so that it gives off the kind of information I would like people to view” (J. Koons, “Interview with McCollum and Koons,” Flash Art, 1987, n.p.)
In Koons’s artistic realm, the vacuum cleaner takes on multiple meanings designed to encourage viewers to reflect upon themselves. “These works present ideal newness,” Koons has explained. “The whole philosophy of my work maintains that the individual just needs self-confidence in life. Self-confidence that is enough — that they can display themselves, use the abilities that they have. They can do it with a new car. They can do it with a vacuum cleaner. They can do it with a chair. They can do very well in life. They just have to do it with themselves” (J. Koons, quoted in "Interview with Anthony Hayden-Guest," reproduced in A. Muthesius, ed. Jeff Koons, Cologne 1992, pp. 16-17). In the context of The New, Koons’s vacuum cleaners are depicted as inanimate secular saints — fetishes and everyday objects that have transcended their original purpose, suggesting a potential path to redemption.
For Koons, the vacuum cleaner serves as a compelling artifact that engages with a broad spectrum of themes foundational to his artistic philosophy. Before his Banality series explored sexuality, and even before the more overtly explicit Made in Heaven, Koons subtly introduced related motifs through pieces like the present work. He explained his choice of the vacuum cleaner by noting its anthropomorphic qualities: it […] displays both male and female sexuality. It has orifices and phallic attachments. I have always tried to create work which does not alienate any part of my audience” (J. Koons, quoted in A. Muthesius, Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 49).
Further elaborating on the theme of anthropomorphism, Koons has referred to these vacuum cleaners as “breathing machines,” explaining that he “always liked that quality of being like lungs. When you come into the world, the first thing you did is breathe to be able to live” (J. Koons, quoted in H. W. Holzwarth, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 2009, p. 112). This idea of breath, already prevalent in his 1970s readymade series Inflatables, runs like a constant thread through Koons’s oeuvre—from his Equilibrium series to the colorful balloon flowers and animals featured in his recent Celebration sculptures. Breath sustains us and is essential to our existence; in Koons's philosophy, art holds similar significance. At the same time, air is invisible, weightless, intangible, and ephemeral, akin to Duchamp’s 50cc of Paris Air from 1919, housed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Mixing Koons’s philosophies on desire, commercialism, and sexuality, The New investigates the vacant world of consumerism with an epic and mythic and immortal sense of possibility and meaning. “In the body of work I called The New, I was interested in a psychological state tied to newness and immortality,” Koons explained. “[The] gestalt came directly from viewing an inanimate object — a vacuum cleaner — that was in a position to be immortal” (J. Koons, quoted in S. Coles & R. Violette, ed., The Jeff Koons Handbook, London, 1992, p. 48).