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Lot Essay
Milled from a single block of black granite, polished to an extremely lustrous finish and weighing several tons, Jeff Koons' colossal Gorilla looms over the viewer, producing a mixture of terror and glee. Conceived in 2006, the work is from the important Hulk Elvis series that Koons describes as "a very high-testosterone body of work" (J. Koons, quoted in A. Sooke, "Face to Face with the Incredible Hulk of American Contemporary Art," The Telegraph, 9 June 2007). The sculpture is based on a souvenir toy gorilla that Koons purchased from a "Mold-A-Rama" machine at the Los Angeles Zoo, and its gleaming, wax-like surface and rough, uneven edging perfectly recreates the original souvenir toy, so that no detail has been spared its painstaking execution. This perfectionism is a hallmark of Koons' work, which endeavors to return the viewer to an immaculate and pure state of openness once experienced in childhood, so that we might become liberated from what he sees as the oppressive and narrowing constraints of perceived taste that are learned in adulthood. But in Koons' work nothing is ever as it seems on the surface, and through the artist's hand the original found object undergoes a profound metamorphosis. Enlarged to giant proportions, towering over the viewer, the Gorilla becomes a colossus, a monster-like King Kong, so that a powerful set of opposing forces come into play. On the one hand, the Gorilla represents a sweet childhood nostalgia; yet on the other, it becomes an alarming monster of colossal proportions, calling forth suppressed nightmares and latent sexual desire.
Solid, hulking and formidable, Koons transforms the Gorilla from a fragile, hollow toy into a gigantic totem, a massive monument, composed of one of the most long-lasting materials in the known world -- black granite -- the material of public monuments and ancient civilizations. As such, the Gorilla represents a transformation: it is an ephemeral object made permanent; a tiny, hollow toy writ large as a solid, imposing sculptural work. Carved from an increadibly durable material, Gorilla becomes a giant of monstrous proportions, a monolith, comparable to the maori of Easter Island or the Egyptian sphinx. In this respect, Koons' Gorilla could be understood as a male counterpart to the Venus figure that has become so prevalent in his recent work, a figure emblematic of masculinity and virility. In terms of present-day comparisons, its most obvious precursor is King Kong, billed as "The Eighth Wonder of the World."
In 1933, RKO pictures released "King Kong," which depicted a colossal "prehistoric type of ape" that titillated audiences by ripping off the heroine's clothing against her screams of protest and going on a violent rampage through the streets of New York, ending in a spectacular climb up the Empire State Building. The film was released "pre-code" and some scenes were later cut because they were deemed either too risqué or too violent. The film's sexual undertones are obvious to modern viewers; one scene displays a native girl, nearly nude and garlanded with flowers, about to become the "bride of Kong." In another scene, the giant ape seems to take relish in peeling off the heroine's clothes, then running his fingers through her blond hair and smelling them. Koons' Gorilla, with its fists to chest, legs wide and teeth bared, presents this same kind of Kong-like beast. It also speaks to the perceived brutality and latent sexual force that pervaded the pseudo-scientific notion of the gorilla that was prevalent in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Koons himself has compared his Gorilla to a little-known nineteenth century sculpture, entitled Gorilla Carrying Off a Woman, by the French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet from 1887. The piece depicts a ferocious, hulking beast of a gorilla, in whose arms a nude woman struggles to free herself. The brutal sexual nature of the piece illustrates the notion of the animal as the embodiment of pure, unadulterated sexuality. And for Koons, sex is at the heart of everything he does. He has said, "there is nothing more important than sex... Absolutely nothing. Without sex, we wouldn't have survival of the species" (J. Koons, ibid).
Yet the most significantly terrifying aspect of Kong is the creature's sheer colossal size. Based on models used in the 1933 film, the monster would have stood somewhere between 20 and 70 feet tall. Likewise, Koons' most celebrated and beloved sculptures recall the colossal scale of Kong; one must only think of his Puppy at 43 feet tall, or the Balloon Dog at 10 feet. With Gorilla, which towers over the viewer at 8 feet, the viewer cannot avoid feeling dwarfed by its presence, on the one hand producing a sense of awe and wonderment, but on the other a kind of visceral terror (what if such a creature were real?). This speaks to the anthropomorphic power of the object-as-sculpture and its ability to transform into something greater than itself, thereby becoming an archetype. In the same way that King Kong has ultimately transcended the bounds of the 1933 film to become part of the collective cultural experience, a popular hero whose identity reaches beyond the narrative of the movie itself, Koons' Gorilla reaches the viewer in a universal, archetypal manner. In fact, the artist has expressed his desire to "create things that connect to humanity, that function as archetypes, and that try to, in a way, show a shared experience" (J. Koons, quoted in S. Rothkopf, Jeff Koons: Hulk Elvis, New York, 2010, p. 120).
Gorilla, like Koons' most celebrated works, is based on the cheap throwaway paraphernalia of childhood, of parties and toys, and speaks to the plastic disposability of our culture itself. Like the blow-up toys from his Inflatables series and the balloon animals from Celebration, the "Mold-A Rama" toy gorilla is hollow on the inside and constructed of inexpensive, short-lived materials. Created from a patented blow-molding process in which plastic is melted down inside of a mold, the toy is formed when air is pumped into it like a balloon. Because it is filled with air, a palpable fragility is evoked by the object, as it calls to mind the fleeting, fragile nature of childhood itself. As an object it signifies a cherished childhood rite, but like its balloon animal or pool toy counterpart, its nature as an object it short-lived. Made of cheap materials, it is an object bound to be broken, stepped on or lost as the child moves on to another, newer toy, so that its existence is as fleeting as childhood itself.
The "Mold-A-Rama" machine rose to popularity in the mid-1960s, though many are still in use today. It used the revolutionary (at the time) technology of plastics, and was capable of creating an entirely new toy every 33 seconds. The "Mold-A-Rama" machine produced an endless parade of identical objects, the homogeneity and sameness of which might recall Warhol's Soup Cans. A certain nostalgia pervades the Gorilla then, as it speaks to a bygone era in which a confident, post-war America took comfort and delight in the overabundance of consumer goods that it was able to manufacture. Furthermore, the "Mold-A-Rama" machine was capable of producing these new toys ad infinitum, thereby producing a product that existed in a perpetual state of "newness," a concept that has long fascinated Koons. As evident in his early bodies of work The New and Pre-New, Koons became fascinated with the idea of newness and the concept of a "perfect" object, an object that was so perfect and new that it existed in a nearly virginal state of perfection. As a "Mold-A-Rama" object, the Gorilla illustrates one of the most important concepts of Koons' career.
The importance of such concepts to a child--and to Koons himself-- cannot be overstated. One can imagine the glee that a child might receive, having been taken on a special outing to the zoo, at watching the toy being created from scratch, then snatching it up after it's popped out of the machine. The "Mold-A-Rama" souvenir gorilla is especially significant because of its size and weight; it fits neatly into the palm of the hand. One can imagine the sensation of exploring the bumpy texture of the plastic, running fingers along the ridged seam that remained from pressing the two halves of the mold together (not unlike a chocolate Easter bunny), and the fingers curling around it, protecting it from harm. Perhaps it is slipped into a pocket or just simply clutched for the duration of the day. A special childhood token, the little souvenir becomes emblematic of the day itself, thereby achieving a kind of talismanic quality, so that it begins to function as a token or a fetish. As a pocket-sized figure, the toy may call to mind prehistoric fertility goddesses, such as the Venus of Willendorf, a copy of which Koons keeps on his desk. These figures were also small enough to hold in the palm, with oversized and exaggerated breasts, stomach and hips.
By the nature of its fabrication in the "Mold-A-Rama" machine, which essentially shoots air into a hollow mold, the toy gorilla recalls the biblical creation story, in which God shaped Adam out of clay and blew air into him to create life. In fact, for Koons, the symbolic power of air as it invokes the life-giving power of oxygen and breath is very important. From his earliest series, the Inflatables, to the Hoover vacuum cleaners of The New, the floating basketballs of Equilibrium and the balloon toys of Celebration, Koons has always been concerned with the life-giving power of air, at one point saying, "I think of the inflatables as anthropomorphic. We are ourselves inflatables, we take a breath, we expand, we contract, our last breath in life, our deflation" (J. Koons, quoted in A. Dannatt, "Jeff Koons," The Art Newspaper, Issue 204, July/August 2009).
Solid, hulking and formidable, Koons transforms the Gorilla from a fragile, hollow toy into a gigantic totem, a massive monument, composed of one of the most long-lasting materials in the known world -- black granite -- the material of public monuments and ancient civilizations. As such, the Gorilla represents a transformation: it is an ephemeral object made permanent; a tiny, hollow toy writ large as a solid, imposing sculptural work. Carved from an increadibly durable material, Gorilla becomes a giant of monstrous proportions, a monolith, comparable to the maori of Easter Island or the Egyptian sphinx. In this respect, Koons' Gorilla could be understood as a male counterpart to the Venus figure that has become so prevalent in his recent work, a figure emblematic of masculinity and virility. In terms of present-day comparisons, its most obvious precursor is King Kong, billed as "The Eighth Wonder of the World."
In 1933, RKO pictures released "King Kong," which depicted a colossal "prehistoric type of ape" that titillated audiences by ripping off the heroine's clothing against her screams of protest and going on a violent rampage through the streets of New York, ending in a spectacular climb up the Empire State Building. The film was released "pre-code" and some scenes were later cut because they were deemed either too risqué or too violent. The film's sexual undertones are obvious to modern viewers; one scene displays a native girl, nearly nude and garlanded with flowers, about to become the "bride of Kong." In another scene, the giant ape seems to take relish in peeling off the heroine's clothes, then running his fingers through her blond hair and smelling them. Koons' Gorilla, with its fists to chest, legs wide and teeth bared, presents this same kind of Kong-like beast. It also speaks to the perceived brutality and latent sexual force that pervaded the pseudo-scientific notion of the gorilla that was prevalent in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Koons himself has compared his Gorilla to a little-known nineteenth century sculpture, entitled Gorilla Carrying Off a Woman, by the French sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet from 1887. The piece depicts a ferocious, hulking beast of a gorilla, in whose arms a nude woman struggles to free herself. The brutal sexual nature of the piece illustrates the notion of the animal as the embodiment of pure, unadulterated sexuality. And for Koons, sex is at the heart of everything he does. He has said, "there is nothing more important than sex... Absolutely nothing. Without sex, we wouldn't have survival of the species" (J. Koons, ibid).
Yet the most significantly terrifying aspect of Kong is the creature's sheer colossal size. Based on models used in the 1933 film, the monster would have stood somewhere between 20 and 70 feet tall. Likewise, Koons' most celebrated and beloved sculptures recall the colossal scale of Kong; one must only think of his Puppy at 43 feet tall, or the Balloon Dog at 10 feet. With Gorilla, which towers over the viewer at 8 feet, the viewer cannot avoid feeling dwarfed by its presence, on the one hand producing a sense of awe and wonderment, but on the other a kind of visceral terror (what if such a creature were real?). This speaks to the anthropomorphic power of the object-as-sculpture and its ability to transform into something greater than itself, thereby becoming an archetype. In the same way that King Kong has ultimately transcended the bounds of the 1933 film to become part of the collective cultural experience, a popular hero whose identity reaches beyond the narrative of the movie itself, Koons' Gorilla reaches the viewer in a universal, archetypal manner. In fact, the artist has expressed his desire to "create things that connect to humanity, that function as archetypes, and that try to, in a way, show a shared experience" (J. Koons, quoted in S. Rothkopf, Jeff Koons: Hulk Elvis, New York, 2010, p. 120).
Gorilla, like Koons' most celebrated works, is based on the cheap throwaway paraphernalia of childhood, of parties and toys, and speaks to the plastic disposability of our culture itself. Like the blow-up toys from his Inflatables series and the balloon animals from Celebration, the "Mold-A Rama" toy gorilla is hollow on the inside and constructed of inexpensive, short-lived materials. Created from a patented blow-molding process in which plastic is melted down inside of a mold, the toy is formed when air is pumped into it like a balloon. Because it is filled with air, a palpable fragility is evoked by the object, as it calls to mind the fleeting, fragile nature of childhood itself. As an object it signifies a cherished childhood rite, but like its balloon animal or pool toy counterpart, its nature as an object it short-lived. Made of cheap materials, it is an object bound to be broken, stepped on or lost as the child moves on to another, newer toy, so that its existence is as fleeting as childhood itself.
The "Mold-A-Rama" machine rose to popularity in the mid-1960s, though many are still in use today. It used the revolutionary (at the time) technology of plastics, and was capable of creating an entirely new toy every 33 seconds. The "Mold-A-Rama" machine produced an endless parade of identical objects, the homogeneity and sameness of which might recall Warhol's Soup Cans. A certain nostalgia pervades the Gorilla then, as it speaks to a bygone era in which a confident, post-war America took comfort and delight in the overabundance of consumer goods that it was able to manufacture. Furthermore, the "Mold-A-Rama" machine was capable of producing these new toys ad infinitum, thereby producing a product that existed in a perpetual state of "newness," a concept that has long fascinated Koons. As evident in his early bodies of work The New and Pre-New, Koons became fascinated with the idea of newness and the concept of a "perfect" object, an object that was so perfect and new that it existed in a nearly virginal state of perfection. As a "Mold-A-Rama" object, the Gorilla illustrates one of the most important concepts of Koons' career.
The importance of such concepts to a child--and to Koons himself-- cannot be overstated. One can imagine the glee that a child might receive, having been taken on a special outing to the zoo, at watching the toy being created from scratch, then snatching it up after it's popped out of the machine. The "Mold-A-Rama" souvenir gorilla is especially significant because of its size and weight; it fits neatly into the palm of the hand. One can imagine the sensation of exploring the bumpy texture of the plastic, running fingers along the ridged seam that remained from pressing the two halves of the mold together (not unlike a chocolate Easter bunny), and the fingers curling around it, protecting it from harm. Perhaps it is slipped into a pocket or just simply clutched for the duration of the day. A special childhood token, the little souvenir becomes emblematic of the day itself, thereby achieving a kind of talismanic quality, so that it begins to function as a token or a fetish. As a pocket-sized figure, the toy may call to mind prehistoric fertility goddesses, such as the Venus of Willendorf, a copy of which Koons keeps on his desk. These figures were also small enough to hold in the palm, with oversized and exaggerated breasts, stomach and hips.
By the nature of its fabrication in the "Mold-A-Rama" machine, which essentially shoots air into a hollow mold, the toy gorilla recalls the biblical creation story, in which God shaped Adam out of clay and blew air into him to create life. In fact, for Koons, the symbolic power of air as it invokes the life-giving power of oxygen and breath is very important. From his earliest series, the Inflatables, to the Hoover vacuum cleaners of The New, the floating basketballs of Equilibrium and the balloon toys of Celebration, Koons has always been concerned with the life-giving power of air, at one point saying, "I think of the inflatables as anthropomorphic. We are ourselves inflatables, we take a breath, we expand, we contract, our last breath in life, our deflation" (J. Koons, quoted in A. Dannatt, "Jeff Koons," The Art Newspaper, Issue 204, July/August 2009).