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Lot Essay
Every intention was realized with just the movement of the flesh, a detail of the eye, the length of a toe, the shaping of a breast, or the way the hair moves. All of these different characteristics, from one statue to another, inform you of who they were—whether it’s Hercules or Aphrodite. All of this information was placed within the work of art.Jeff Koons (J. Koons, “Jeff Koons on Desire, Beauty, the Vastness of the Universe, and the Intimacy of Right Here, Right Now,” Artspace, May 21, 2020)
Standing nearly nine feet tall, the subject of Jeff Koons’s Aphrodite lives among art history’s greatest sculptures, and under Koons’s tutelage the Greek goddess’s lustrous form is as desirable as any classical rendering of her. His precise, yet delicate, touch is on full display here as he offers us a sculpture that lies at a point between truth and fiction, movement and stasis, myth and the now. With works such as this, Koons established himself as a twenty-first century Pygmalion, who, driven by desire, breathes life into the inanimate. Indeed, Ovid could be describing Koons in his poem Metamorphoses, the source of the Pygmalion myth, “He carved a statue out of snow-white ivory, and gave to it exquisite beauty, which no woman of the world has ever equalled: she was so beautiful, he fell in love with his creation” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1983, p. 242).
Koons’s references to Aphrodite are part of a long, fascinating history of the goddess within art history. He eloquently references the ‘readymade’ nature of Roman sculpture, which also characterizes his ouevre, “A lot of these pieces are copies, and you can feel the dedication that the Romans had to try to preserve all of the power within the original Greek pieces from the third century BCE. But at the same time, you always have the desire for a new form, a new material realization,” (J. Koons, The Artist Project: Jeff Koons, Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 6, 2016). As an example, one might look to the marble statue of Aphrodite in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum itself. This statue is a copy of a Greek original as Koons notes, and the legs are also their own copies as well; they were restored from a cast of the Medici Venus in Florence.
For his rendition of Aphrodite, Koons modeled his sculpture on a Royal Dux figurine. The early 20th century figurine was manufactured in the Czech Republic. The Porcelain series, which Aphrodite is part of, uses porcelain figurines as models which range from the 17th century to the present day. In antiquity, Aphrodite often used her hands to cover her breasts and pubic area, but Koons chooses to amplify her sexuality and use a source material that leaves her uncovered. Conversely, the Aphrodite of Knidos (4thcentury BCE), the first sculpture to show Aphrodite nude and the model upon which later sculptures of the goddess relied, leaves her breasts nude as Koons does (he explicitly used this iteration of Aphrodite in works such as Antiquity 4, 2010-2013). Furthermore, his Aphrodite, with her limbs intact, is both a readymade and an act of aspiration, a gesture of wholeness inspired by mass produced and repeated objects. It is also important to note that Koons’s appropriation of this porcelain figure instead of a Greco-Roman “original” is in fact truer to life. While we assume sculptures of antiquity have always been marble white, they were in fact polychromed, and their pigments have chipped off over the centuries.
An important Roman erotic text described the Aphrodite of Knidos as a spectacle of desire, “The goddess stands in the center; her statue made of marble from Paros. Her lips are slightly parted by a lofty smile. Nothing hides her beauty, which is entirely exposed, other than a furtive hand veiling her modesty. The art of the sculptor has succeeded so well that it seems the marble has shed its hardness to mold the grace of her limbs” (Lucian of Samosata, Erōtes, approx. 2nd-4th century CE). The same could be said of Koons’s Aphrodite, which is the culmination of his longstanding fascination with the goddess.
With Aphrodite, Koons transcends time. It reaches back into antiquity even as it references the birth of modernity in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Neoclassicism. Koons channels the unabashed sensuality of Alexandre Cabanel’s famous painting The Birth of Venus (1863, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), in which the titular figure looks coyly out at us with one barely open eye. The sculptural luxuriousness of the present Aphrodite is also apparent in Jacques-Louis David’s Mars Disarmed by Venus (1824, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels), whose lush treatment of bodies has all the tactility and elegance of Koons’s. David’s Venus exhibits the impossibly extended back that would characterize much Orientalist and Neoclassical painting, a technique used to amplify the sexuality of the composition. The same could be said of the present work, whose lithe verticality presents the body in its idealized form.
Finally, Koons’s reference to Aphrodite is undoubtedly contemporary. Known for interdisciplinary work, he collaborated with Lady Gaga on her celebrated album ARTPOP (2013), for which he turned her into a sculpture of sorts. On her track “Venus”
Gaga begins:
Rocket #9 take off to the planet (to the planet)
Venus
Aphrodite lady seashell bikini (garden panty)
Venus
Let's blast off to a new dimension (in your bedroom)
Venus
Aphrodite lady seashell bikini (get with me)
Venus
When Gaga performed “Venus” live at her ArtRave in 2013, the stage was graced with a Koons sculpture of the singer, as if to connect their related interest in the archetype of empowered feminine sexuality.
Above all, as evinced by Aphrodite, Koons’s work centers on the pleasure of looking. As curator Scott Rothkopf argues, “His sculptures are so replete in their fine detail that they suggest their models’ original materials and draw us into a slow delectation of their precisely articulated parts” (S. Rothkopf, Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2014 p. 20). Central to this process of looking are spectacle and awe, which have always driven Koons’s monumental sculptures.
In Jean Raoux’s 1717 painting Pygmalion Adoring His Statue, beings both human and divine admire Galatea as she transforms from stone to flesh. Aphrodite likewise beckons our attention, for, as with all of Koons’s work, the viewer must complete it. The viewer is an integral part of the process, in fact, since participation and community have always been Koons’s aims. With the present work, we are not only in communication with each other and the artist, but also with history itself. Koons once again proves his deft navigation of art history, as well as his unparalleled eye for myth, universality, and sensuality. From a porcelain knickknack he can create an entire universe that brings the past into the present, reminding us of the endless resonances of art from the accoutrements of suburban shelves to the comings and goings of gods.
Standing nearly nine feet tall, the subject of Jeff Koons’s Aphrodite lives among art history’s greatest sculptures, and under Koons’s tutelage the Greek goddess’s lustrous form is as desirable as any classical rendering of her. His precise, yet delicate, touch is on full display here as he offers us a sculpture that lies at a point between truth and fiction, movement and stasis, myth and the now. With works such as this, Koons established himself as a twenty-first century Pygmalion, who, driven by desire, breathes life into the inanimate. Indeed, Ovid could be describing Koons in his poem Metamorphoses, the source of the Pygmalion myth, “He carved a statue out of snow-white ivory, and gave to it exquisite beauty, which no woman of the world has ever equalled: she was so beautiful, he fell in love with his creation” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1983, p. 242).
Koons’s references to Aphrodite are part of a long, fascinating history of the goddess within art history. He eloquently references the ‘readymade’ nature of Roman sculpture, which also characterizes his ouevre, “A lot of these pieces are copies, and you can feel the dedication that the Romans had to try to preserve all of the power within the original Greek pieces from the third century BCE. But at the same time, you always have the desire for a new form, a new material realization,” (J. Koons, The Artist Project: Jeff Koons, Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 6, 2016). As an example, one might look to the marble statue of Aphrodite in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum itself. This statue is a copy of a Greek original as Koons notes, and the legs are also their own copies as well; they were restored from a cast of the Medici Venus in Florence.
For his rendition of Aphrodite, Koons modeled his sculpture on a Royal Dux figurine. The early 20th century figurine was manufactured in the Czech Republic. The Porcelain series, which Aphrodite is part of, uses porcelain figurines as models which range from the 17th century to the present day. In antiquity, Aphrodite often used her hands to cover her breasts and pubic area, but Koons chooses to amplify her sexuality and use a source material that leaves her uncovered. Conversely, the Aphrodite of Knidos (4thcentury BCE), the first sculpture to show Aphrodite nude and the model upon which later sculptures of the goddess relied, leaves her breasts nude as Koons does (he explicitly used this iteration of Aphrodite in works such as Antiquity 4, 2010-2013). Furthermore, his Aphrodite, with her limbs intact, is both a readymade and an act of aspiration, a gesture of wholeness inspired by mass produced and repeated objects. It is also important to note that Koons’s appropriation of this porcelain figure instead of a Greco-Roman “original” is in fact truer to life. While we assume sculptures of antiquity have always been marble white, they were in fact polychromed, and their pigments have chipped off over the centuries.
An important Roman erotic text described the Aphrodite of Knidos as a spectacle of desire, “The goddess stands in the center; her statue made of marble from Paros. Her lips are slightly parted by a lofty smile. Nothing hides her beauty, which is entirely exposed, other than a furtive hand veiling her modesty. The art of the sculptor has succeeded so well that it seems the marble has shed its hardness to mold the grace of her limbs” (Lucian of Samosata, Erōtes, approx. 2nd-4th century CE). The same could be said of Koons’s Aphrodite, which is the culmination of his longstanding fascination with the goddess.
With Aphrodite, Koons transcends time. It reaches back into antiquity even as it references the birth of modernity in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Neoclassicism. Koons channels the unabashed sensuality of Alexandre Cabanel’s famous painting The Birth of Venus (1863, Musée d’Orsay, Paris), in which the titular figure looks coyly out at us with one barely open eye. The sculptural luxuriousness of the present Aphrodite is also apparent in Jacques-Louis David’s Mars Disarmed by Venus (1824, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels), whose lush treatment of bodies has all the tactility and elegance of Koons’s. David’s Venus exhibits the impossibly extended back that would characterize much Orientalist and Neoclassical painting, a technique used to amplify the sexuality of the composition. The same could be said of the present work, whose lithe verticality presents the body in its idealized form.
Finally, Koons’s reference to Aphrodite is undoubtedly contemporary. Known for interdisciplinary work, he collaborated with Lady Gaga on her celebrated album ARTPOP (2013), for which he turned her into a sculpture of sorts. On her track “Venus”
Gaga begins:
Rocket #9 take off to the planet (to the planet)
Venus
Aphrodite lady seashell bikini (garden panty)
Venus
Let's blast off to a new dimension (in your bedroom)
Venus
Aphrodite lady seashell bikini (get with me)
Venus
When Gaga performed “Venus” live at her ArtRave in 2013, the stage was graced with a Koons sculpture of the singer, as if to connect their related interest in the archetype of empowered feminine sexuality.
Above all, as evinced by Aphrodite, Koons’s work centers on the pleasure of looking. As curator Scott Rothkopf argues, “His sculptures are so replete in their fine detail that they suggest their models’ original materials and draw us into a slow delectation of their precisely articulated parts” (S. Rothkopf, Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2014 p. 20). Central to this process of looking are spectacle and awe, which have always driven Koons’s monumental sculptures.
In Jean Raoux’s 1717 painting Pygmalion Adoring His Statue, beings both human and divine admire Galatea as she transforms from stone to flesh. Aphrodite likewise beckons our attention, for, as with all of Koons’s work, the viewer must complete it. The viewer is an integral part of the process, in fact, since participation and community have always been Koons’s aims. With the present work, we are not only in communication with each other and the artist, but also with history itself. Koons once again proves his deft navigation of art history, as well as his unparalleled eye for myth, universality, and sensuality. From a porcelain knickknack he can create an entire universe that brings the past into the present, reminding us of the endless resonances of art from the accoutrements of suburban shelves to the comings and goings of gods.