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Lot Essay
"We are a contemporary Adam and Eve," stated Jeff Koons in discussing the famed Made in Heaven series, which has as its central subject the "coupling" of Koons and his then new wife, porn star cum politician, Ciccolina. Made in Heaven marked the moment when Koons joined his art and his personal life together as one, and elevated his work to a place where sexual appetites would function at a scale and level that referenced Old Master archetypes and Roman Statuary.
The result was a group of works that united the high production values of Hollywood films with an edgy subtext that tested the boundaries of what is considered to be in "good taste." More importantly, the works in Made in Heaven reflect the artist's core belief in the transformative powers of the everyday, and how that can be glorified and made to reach the masses.
In the words of the renowned art historian Robert Rosenblum, "Among other amazing things about this group of images, which replaced the earlier, relatively discreet concealment of pudenda with gynecological close-ups of genital unions worthy of the Kamasutra, was that, of all unlikely things, art totally vanquished, or rather absorbed, sex. Instead of a porno show, the effect was like that of Japanese erotic prints, where the degree of stylization is so exaggerated that the sexual acrobatics as such are quickly submerged in an all-engulfing artifice." (Robert Rosenblum in The Jeff Koons Handbook, Rizzoli, London, 1992, p.25).
The result was a group of works that united the high production values of Hollywood films with an edgy subtext that tested the boundaries of what is considered to be in "good taste." More importantly, the works in Made in Heaven reflect the artist's core belief in the transformative powers of the everyday, and how that can be glorified and made to reach the masses.
In the words of the renowned art historian Robert Rosenblum, "Among other amazing things about this group of images, which replaced the earlier, relatively discreet concealment of pudenda with gynecological close-ups of genital unions worthy of the Kamasutra, was that, of all unlikely things, art totally vanquished, or rather absorbed, sex. Instead of a porno show, the effect was like that of Japanese erotic prints, where the degree of stylization is so exaggerated that the sexual acrobatics as such are quickly submerged in an all-engulfing artifice." (Robert Rosenblum in The Jeff Koons Handbook, Rizzoli, London, 1992, p.25).