Previously, Jeff Koons was a couturier… of Wall Street commodities. When he ventured into art, it was with the idea of it as a preferred vehicle for merchandising. It was only natural then for him to collaborate with the Château Mouton Rothschild when they asked him to imagine the tag for their 2010 vintage. Jeff Koons doesn’t work alone. It is in his New York workshop that he spurs and executes his ideas with close to 100 assistants. His art is considered emblematic of the end of the 20th century. His art is at the crossroads of Duchamp ready-made, pop art, Arman art that consists of accumulating the same object to the point of desubstantializing it, and the gargantuan everyday objects of Claes Oldenburg. What Koons seeks to understand is how and why consumer products can be enhanced, magnified, even glorified.
Ringleader of kitsch pop art, this artist, familiar with photography, sculpture, and painting, along with financial brokering, had a blank slate to imagine the dressings for this bottle of luxury champagne. And this time, it’s into the history of art that he’s plunged his meditation, since he’s borrowed the voluptuous and more-than-advantageous curves of his sculpture from a limestone figurine of 11 cm in height that dates back to more than 24,000 years ago. Discovered in Austria in 2008, the statue was dubbed the “Venus of Willendorf”. With his balloons, Jeff Koons is revisiting one of the creations in his “Antiquity” series that debuted in 2008: “the Balloon Venus”.
Reproduced in a shrunken-down version made of reflective pink resin, this new post-modernist idol protects a bottle of Dom Pérignon in the suede interior of its curves. The champagne is delivered as per delectably usual with its notes of violet, vanilla, and guava. With only 650 copies in circulation, for the modest sum of $20,000, the sculpture was unveiled at a preview event in New York. At that price, you’ll get the bottle, the box, and the statue – a work of art from one of the most invaluable artists of our era.
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