.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Known for his iconic large-scale sculptures which combine dazzling craftsmanship with conceptual rigor, Jeff Koons is one of the most widely-celebrated artists of the current era. His works pull from the archive of popular culture in order to turn an eye toward such critical topics as consumerism, advertising, and the inherent social structures of capitalist society. As conceptually complex as it is aesthetically striking, Jim Beam - J. B. Turner Train marks one of the artist’s first forays into highly polished steel as a medium. First realized in 1986, it was a core component of his seminal 1986 Luxury and Degradation exhibition which helped to cement his recognition around the world. Through this work Koons draws our attention to the dangers of wealth signaling and the ways in which art and imagery have been used to create a subtle but powerful divide within the cultural consciousness. As he explained, "I wanted to suggest how the idea of luxury, through abstraction, is used to induce a psychological state of degradation, the public is constantly undergoing a re-education, being set up for the big kill" (J. Koons, quoted in T. Kellein (ed.), Jeff Koons Pictures: 1980-2002, exh. cat., Bielefeld, 2002, p. 45). Viewing advertisements full of expensive goods that manufacturers tout as luxury items, the general population yearns to be on a level worthy of buying them and financially sound enough to afford them. However, this constant need to possess things out of reach erodes the self-worth and self-image of the consumer. This in turn creates an even deeper need to own and purchase branded or expensive items for the sheer fact that they have a logo or a large price tag. This is a fact that Koons leverages with his sumptuous mirrored works by delivering the glitz and glamour wrapped around an abstraction of reality.
Intricately detailed and visually stunning, Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Train is a masterful of Koon’s fastidious technique. Cast in steel, the gleaming steam engine pulls six cars behind it on a purpose-made track that extends beyond the train on either side. The polished chimney on the front of the locomotive extends upward in utilitarian grandeur, and each bit of ornament and mechanical embellishment is recreated in exacting detail. The ground itself is stylized and takes after the cast elements of the miniature source rather than any real rocky terrain. Looking for all intents and purposes like a scale model of a functioning vehicle, the attention to detail in Koons’s artifice does not stop at surface level.
Like the impetus for its creation, the artist’s train is also a vessel for storing liquor. Within the body of the vehicle, bourbon sourced from the Jim Beam distillery lies in wait in a dark amber pool, sealed with an excise label. Koons has worked with liquids before, notably in his One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series), 1985, but the present example is less of a scientific investigation and more about authenticity coupled with a conversation about the advertising industry in relation to class connections with alcohol. Certain brands and bottles are purposefully created, labeled, and marketed to specific groups of people in a convoluted process of asking what the consumers want while also telling them what they should buy. By pouring American whiskey into a symbol of the adventurous frontier days of the early United States, Jim Beam appeals to nostalgia, history, and a sense of place. Koons highlights this aspect by enlarging the container and creating a perfect object more reminiscent of late-nineteenth-century emblems of opulence than a novelty promotional device.
The use of polished stainless steel brings about multiple allusions to both industry and attraction, two themes that show up in Koons’s oeuvre time and time again. On the one hand, steel is an efficient, strong material that can be used to make long-lasting objects, instruments, and appliances. On the other hand, when buffed to a high degree of silvery sheen, the resulting luster is so enticing one cannot help but stare at their own reflection. These narcissistic tendencies are coupled with temptation and vice in the present example as the mirror of metal stands between the viewer and a sea of bourbon whiskey. Seeing ourselves warp and twist over the surface of the train creates a direct connection between the viewer and the work that is hard to escape. "I often use reflective surfaces in my work, starting to work with polished steel in 1986," Koons noted. "Polishing the metal lent it a desirous surface, but also one that gave affirmation to the viewer. And this is also the sexual part—it’s about affirming the viewer, telling him, 'You exist!' When you move, it moves. The reflection changes. If you don't move, nothing happens. Everything depends on you, the viewer" (J. Koons, quoted in I. Graw, "There Is No Art in It: Isabelle Graw in Conversation with Jeff Koons," pp. 75-83, M. Ulrich (ed.), Jeff Koons: The Painter, exh. cat., Frankfurt, 2012, p. 78). This self-affirmation and self-realization is at the heart of Koons’s practice as he holds a (sometimes literal) mirror up to society and the trappings of Western late-stage capitalism. We see ourselves in the objects of our desire, and sometimes we end up looking past the material item and into our own psyches.
It is a very seductive shiny material and the viewer looks at this and feels for the moment economically secure," Koons stated. "It's most like the gold- and silver-leafing in church during the Baroque and the Rococo." - Jeff Koons, quoted in A. Muthesius, Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 22).
The locomotive plays a large part in the mythology of the American West and the romanticized visions of gunslingers, train robberies, and puffs of steam and smoke billowing across the vast plains of the American West. Furthermore, bourbon and steel factor into this conversation as foils that swing from temptation and cowboy saloons in the former to industrial progress in the latter. When Jim Beam chose to make their decanter, they selected an actual train with roots in this narrative. Built just after the American Civil War, the ‘John B. Turner’ was one of those powerful engines that cut its way through the open spaces of the fledgling rail system in the early United States. Named for one of the presidents of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad Company, it was christened in Chicago in 1867 and has been commemorated in multiple forms. Playing into a prevalent nostalgia for seemingly simpler times, Jim Beam called upon this historical icon to market whiskey with the air of old America. In the early twentieth-century, when industry and progress were continuously changing the social and physical landscape of the country, many people became wistful for earlier days. Seeing the days gone by through rose-colored glasses, artists and companies alike set up a romanticized version of the past and created works that seemed familiar and comforting to a population caught up in the speedy evolution of daily life. Koons combines this false nostalgia with false luxury as he uses the sentimental imagery but crafts it in a sparkling metal container that is at times like a holy medieval reliquary and at others like an extravagant shipping container. The conflation of utility and luxury offers a startling dichotomy that invites further examination of the interior process and Koons’s overall conceptual strategy.
Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Train is an illustration of American class structure and the swift industrialization that created the country. The idea came from a novelty object produced by the Jim Beam company to sell whiskey. Originally a liquor decanter crafted from porcelain and plastic, Koons happened upon the impetus for the current example as he was walking down New York’s Fifth Avenue. Seeing the model steam locomotive with trailing cars, he was inspired to recreate it in steel. However, although the finished work is nearly nine feet in length, the original use is not lost. Once the artist fabricated his version, he contacted Jim Beam and had the company fill his oversized vessel with bourbon and issue tax stamps for the alcohol, just as they would have with the commercial items.
The inclusion of the bourbon is important to a full reading of the work, and represents the construction and conflict inherent in socio-economic differences within American life. “All the things that destabilize. That's the story of Luxury and Degradation," he said. "I think there is some truth in it. I paralleled the alcoholic, the desire for alcohol, and the dependence on alcohol as an underlying debasement and degradation" (J. Koons, quoted in Kellein (ed.), op. cit., 2002, p. 21).
In its original exhibition, Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Train and its compatriots were accompanied by lavish reproductions of advertisements for alcohol which Koons appropriated from a variety of sources. In sequence, these ads show the ways in which marketing teams target different demographics in order to sell the most product. Like the train decanter, Koons sourced these images from the real world, pulling from different neighborhoods around New York. Noting the differences in style that depended upon the advertisement’s origin, he sets up a striking conversation about the effects of marketing on the population as it both appeals to and shapes the viewer.
Intricately detailed and visually stunning, Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Train is a masterful of Koon’s fastidious technique. Cast in steel, the gleaming steam engine pulls six cars behind it on a purpose-made track that extends beyond the train on either side. The polished chimney on the front of the locomotive extends upward in utilitarian grandeur, and each bit of ornament and mechanical embellishment is recreated in exacting detail. The ground itself is stylized and takes after the cast elements of the miniature source rather than any real rocky terrain. Looking for all intents and purposes like a scale model of a functioning vehicle, the attention to detail in Koons’s artifice does not stop at surface level.
Like the impetus for its creation, the artist’s train is also a vessel for storing liquor. Within the body of the vehicle, bourbon sourced from the Jim Beam distillery lies in wait in a dark amber pool, sealed with an excise label. Koons has worked with liquids before, notably in his One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series), 1985, but the present example is less of a scientific investigation and more about authenticity coupled with a conversation about the advertising industry in relation to class connections with alcohol. Certain brands and bottles are purposefully created, labeled, and marketed to specific groups of people in a convoluted process of asking what the consumers want while also telling them what they should buy. By pouring American whiskey into a symbol of the adventurous frontier days of the early United States, Jim Beam appeals to nostalgia, history, and a sense of place. Koons highlights this aspect by enlarging the container and creating a perfect object more reminiscent of late-nineteenth-century emblems of opulence than a novelty promotional device.
The use of polished stainless steel brings about multiple allusions to both industry and attraction, two themes that show up in Koons’s oeuvre time and time again. On the one hand, steel is an efficient, strong material that can be used to make long-lasting objects, instruments, and appliances. On the other hand, when buffed to a high degree of silvery sheen, the resulting luster is so enticing one cannot help but stare at their own reflection. These narcissistic tendencies are coupled with temptation and vice in the present example as the mirror of metal stands between the viewer and a sea of bourbon whiskey. Seeing ourselves warp and twist over the surface of the train creates a direct connection between the viewer and the work that is hard to escape. "I often use reflective surfaces in my work, starting to work with polished steel in 1986," Koons noted. "Polishing the metal lent it a desirous surface, but also one that gave affirmation to the viewer. And this is also the sexual part—it’s about affirming the viewer, telling him, 'You exist!' When you move, it moves. The reflection changes. If you don't move, nothing happens. Everything depends on you, the viewer" (J. Koons, quoted in I. Graw, "There Is No Art in It: Isabelle Graw in Conversation with Jeff Koons," pp. 75-83, M. Ulrich (ed.), Jeff Koons: The Painter, exh. cat., Frankfurt, 2012, p. 78). This self-affirmation and self-realization is at the heart of Koons’s practice as he holds a (sometimes literal) mirror up to society and the trappings of Western late-stage capitalism. We see ourselves in the objects of our desire, and sometimes we end up looking past the material item and into our own psyches.
It is a very seductive shiny material and the viewer looks at this and feels for the moment economically secure," Koons stated. "It's most like the gold- and silver-leafing in church during the Baroque and the Rococo." - Jeff Koons, quoted in A. Muthesius, Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 22).
The locomotive plays a large part in the mythology of the American West and the romanticized visions of gunslingers, train robberies, and puffs of steam and smoke billowing across the vast plains of the American West. Furthermore, bourbon and steel factor into this conversation as foils that swing from temptation and cowboy saloons in the former to industrial progress in the latter. When Jim Beam chose to make their decanter, they selected an actual train with roots in this narrative. Built just after the American Civil War, the ‘John B. Turner’ was one of those powerful engines that cut its way through the open spaces of the fledgling rail system in the early United States. Named for one of the presidents of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad Company, it was christened in Chicago in 1867 and has been commemorated in multiple forms. Playing into a prevalent nostalgia for seemingly simpler times, Jim Beam called upon this historical icon to market whiskey with the air of old America. In the early twentieth-century, when industry and progress were continuously changing the social and physical landscape of the country, many people became wistful for earlier days. Seeing the days gone by through rose-colored glasses, artists and companies alike set up a romanticized version of the past and created works that seemed familiar and comforting to a population caught up in the speedy evolution of daily life. Koons combines this false nostalgia with false luxury as he uses the sentimental imagery but crafts it in a sparkling metal container that is at times like a holy medieval reliquary and at others like an extravagant shipping container. The conflation of utility and luxury offers a startling dichotomy that invites further examination of the interior process and Koons’s overall conceptual strategy.
Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Train is an illustration of American class structure and the swift industrialization that created the country. The idea came from a novelty object produced by the Jim Beam company to sell whiskey. Originally a liquor decanter crafted from porcelain and plastic, Koons happened upon the impetus for the current example as he was walking down New York’s Fifth Avenue. Seeing the model steam locomotive with trailing cars, he was inspired to recreate it in steel. However, although the finished work is nearly nine feet in length, the original use is not lost. Once the artist fabricated his version, he contacted Jim Beam and had the company fill his oversized vessel with bourbon and issue tax stamps for the alcohol, just as they would have with the commercial items.
The inclusion of the bourbon is important to a full reading of the work, and represents the construction and conflict inherent in socio-economic differences within American life. “All the things that destabilize. That's the story of Luxury and Degradation," he said. "I think there is some truth in it. I paralleled the alcoholic, the desire for alcohol, and the dependence on alcohol as an underlying debasement and degradation" (J. Koons, quoted in Kellein (ed.), op. cit., 2002, p. 21).
In its original exhibition, Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Train and its compatriots were accompanied by lavish reproductions of advertisements for alcohol which Koons appropriated from a variety of sources. In sequence, these ads show the ways in which marketing teams target different demographics in order to sell the most product. Like the train decanter, Koons sourced these images from the real world, pulling from different neighborhoods around New York. Noting the differences in style that depended upon the advertisement’s origin, he sets up a striking conversation about the effects of marketing on the population as it both appeals to and shapes the viewer.