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JEFF KOONS (b. 1955) SELF-PORTRAIT marble 37 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. (95.3 x 52.1 x 36.8 cm) ex...

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JEFF KOONS (b. 1955) SELF-PORTRAIT marble 37 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. (95.3 x 52.1 x 36.8 cm) ex...
JEFF KOONS
(b. 1955)
SELF-PORTRAIT
marble
37 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 14 1/2 in.
(95.3 x 52.1 x 36.8 cm)
executed in 1991
this work is from an edition of three with one artist's proof <p>PROVENANCE
Sonnabend Gallery, NEW YORK <p>EXHIBITED
NEW YORK, Sonnabend Gallery and COLOGNE, Max Heltzer Galerie, MADE IN HEAVEN, 1991
San Francisco Museum of Art and MINNEAPOLIS, Walker Art Center, JEFF KOONS, December 10-October 3, 1993, pl. 52 and back cover (illustrated)
AMSTERDAM, Aarhus Kunstmuseum and Staatsgalerie Stuttgart,
JEFF KOONS, January 22-April 18, 1993, p. 72 (illustrated)
Aspen Art Museum, WARHOL, KOONS, HIRST; CULT AND CULTURE, August 3- September 30, 2001, pl. 19 (another example exhibited; illustrated)
PARIS, Musée national d'arte moderne-Centre George Pompidou,
SON & LUMIERES, November 2000-January 2001 <p>LITERATURE
A. Muthesius, JEFF KOONS, COLOGNE, 1992, p.155, no. 38 (illustrated)
J. Koons, THE JEFF KOONS HANDBOOK, NEW YORK, 1992, p. 121 (illustrated)
By 1990, Jeff Koons had established himself as an artist of significant importance. With several distinct bodies of work under his belt, Koons had achieved both acclaim and notoriety as an ironic provocateur in the tradition of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. The artist's next creative venture, presented under the title Made in Heaven, was distinguished by its graphic sexual content. Yet the unbridled eroticism of Made in Heaven overshadowed another important aspect of this particular body of work. For the first time in his illustrious career, Koons created numerous self-portraits, among which the present work may be counted.
SELF-PORTRAIT offers a likeness of the artist in the form of a marble bust. A genre of sculpture with deep historical roots, the bust-length portrait has been used since antiquity to venerate Roman senators, French aristocrats, and other figures of high social standing. Indeed, Koons had previously subverted this tradition in his Statuary series, creating a stainless steel sculpture of Louis XIV (1986). By co-opting the bust-length format for his own image, Koons clearly attempts to ennoble his artistic persona. Here the artist's chest, shoulders, and neck are granted a generous musculature. This robust physique supports the chiseled features of his face, which are turned to the heavens in an expression of serene confidence. Koons further aggrandizes his own image with a base made of jewel-cut stalagmites. This spiky explosion lends a dramatic dynamism to the sculpture, perhaps suggesting the generative power of the artist's creative vision. The obvious narcissism of this heroic self-portrait was certainly not lost on Koons. "If you put art in the hands of the monarch," he has explained, "it will reflect his ego and eventually become decorative. If you put art in the hands of the masses, it will reflect mass ego and eventually become decorative. If you put art in the hands of Jeff Koons, it will reflect my ego and eventually become decorative" (Quoted in THE JEFF KOONS HANDBOOK, NEW YORK: Rizzoli, 1992, p. 76).
The egotism of the present work is best understood within the context of Koons' artistic output to date. Just as his earlier work had cleverly interrogated the repressed desires of middle-class Americans, the various works in Made in Heaven turned the tables to examine the artist's own hidden yearnings. Most obviously, the photographic and sculptural tableaux of Koons and his wife having kinky sex offered one answer to this self-examination. The present work, by contrast, exposes a narcissistic desire for fame, success, and historical importance. With a heavy dose of irony, Koons suggests that such desires underscore a great deal of cultural production in contemporary society. Yet these motivations are often sublimated and disavowed in the name of art. As Brian Wallis has explained, "Repulsive or not, exploitation of the media and self-advertisement of a mythologized version of his persona are integral and unabashed parts of Koons's work. Slick magazines have swallowed whole the promotional saga of his rise from quaint beginnings as a membership clerk at the Museum of Modern Art to his marriage to the Italian ex-porn star Cicciolina.... But if such unadorned narcissism makes many art critics slightly queasy it is because narcissism in the art world is generally cloaked in the disguise of art or politics. The deification of self as high-priced commodity is the ultimate enactment of narcissism under capitalism, but is generally seen as a hindrance to political and aesthetic effectiveness in the art world" (Brian Wallis, "We Don't Need Another Hero: Aspects of the Critical Reception of the Work of Jeff Koons," JEFF KOONS, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1992, p. 28).
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