.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Jeff Koons’s Silver Shoes is an iconic work from the artist’s pivotal Made in Heaven series. Created from 1989 to 1992, the notorious series marked a dramatic evolution for Koons, presenting his first works on canvas as well as fully conceptualizing the motifs that he would continue to elaborate on until the present day. Focusing on themes of desire and objectification, which Koons considers the driving forces of art history, the series presents large silk-screened images of sexual activity between Koons and his then-wife Ilona Staller, also known by the moniker Cicciolina. The paintings were first exhibited alongside life-sized wood sculptures of animals and flowers, as well as glass figurines of the duo. This radical new project functioned as a “Gesamtkunstwerk that unfolded in real time over several years,” as the art historian Alison M. Gingeras writes. “In the process of making Made in Heaven from 1989 to 1992, Jeff Koons became Jeff Koons. It was over this crucial three-year span that he forged both his art world and mainstream identity. As has been documented in recent art historical scholarship, this body of work allowed Koons to ‘crossover’—catapulting him from art world star to mainstream media figure” (“Born through Porn: How Jeff Koons Became Jeff Koons,” in Jeff Koons: Made in Heaven, exh. cat., Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, 2010, pp. 13-14).
Describing the Made in Heaven series, Koons noted that “it was about using the body as metaphor, again, for self-acceptance, the acceptance of sexuality, how we procreate, how we continue the species. It’s our genes, our DNA. I believe that there are forms of communication that are biological, which are really quite profound” (quoted M. Prather, “Interview with Jeff Koons,” in Regarding Warhol, Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2012, p. 197). In Silver Shoes, the titular element foregrounds the composition, foreshortened directly at the apparent surface of the canvas as Staller’s legs dangle in the air, feet crossed slightly at the ankles. Koons presents the scene frontally, revealing both his and Staller’s genitalia as well as their facial expressions—Staller’s face appears lost in ecstasy, a modern reenactment of Bernini’s St. Teresa in Ecstacy, which Koons’s intent gaze seems determined to capture. The scene appears to be one of post-coital bliss, contrasting with the more active positions of the other works from the Made in Heaven series. While erotic and explicit, the present work, and the series overall, are by no means pornographic. As the curator and art critic John Caldwell writes of the series, “A curious aspect of Koons’s new paintings is that they are not pornographic, even though they are explicit depictions of sexual activity… Probably the reason for this is that in one sense, they are too real. In an essay published in 1969, Susan Sontag pointed out that pornography is often placed outside the category of serious writing because it lacks fully developed characters. Her thesis was that the characters in a pornographic novel must be fairly generic figures in order to project our erotic desires onto them; too much literary specificity in its actors would make the characters into real people and interfere with our fantasies. In the case of Koons’s work, something like that seems to have happened” (“Jeff Koons: The Way We Live Now,” in Jeff Koons, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1992, p. 14).
“Like rococo art and Duchamp,” the scholar Daniela Salvioni writes, “Made in Heaven unabashedly places sex within the purview of art. It dares to broach the issue of pleasure in a context in which its appearance is rare, despite the fact that to please is an integral function of art. Moreover, it does so in an era besieged by hysterical puritanism, thus ushering in, in my opinion, a welcome defiance of repressive attacks” (“Jeff Koons’s Poetics of Class,” in ibid., p. 25). As Salvioni notes, erotic art has a long and distinguished art historical legacy, from prehistoric fertility talismans onward to the disguised eroticism of Fragonard. Koons himself makes both explicit and implicit reference to this history in the series: his work Manet references the French artist’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, while his Violet Ice (Kama Sutra) refers to the famous ancient Sanskrit text on sexuality and eroticism. In the present work, Koons makes more implicit reference to historic erotic art—the position of the couple recalls the pose of the two lovers in Michelangelo’s Leda and the Swan, later destroyed for its supposed indecent subject matter, as well as a work from the infamous series of prints made by Marcantonio Raimondi in collaboration with the writer and poet Pietro Aretino. Known as I modi, or The Sixteen Pleasures, this series of erotic prints was among the first to elevate erotic art into the art historical mainstream.
Silver Shoes also resembles another antecedent—the erotic paintings of Egon Schiele, particularly Man and Woman I (Lovers I) (1914, Private collection) and The Embrace (Lovers II) (1917, Belvedere, Vienna). In the latter, Schiele paints a self-portrait of himself and his wife Edith post-coitus. In these works, the artist explores “the fundamental rift between the sexes, and revolve around duality, unfulfilled desires and expectations, and the failure of relationships” as the art historian Kerstin Jesse writes (“From ‘Hell Brueghel’ to ‘Decipherer of Human Traits’: Egon Schiele’s ‘Late Works from 1914 to 1918,” in Changing Times: Egon Schiele’s Last Years, 1914-1918, exh. cat., Leopold Museum, Vienna, 2025, p. 24). Like Schiele, Koons transforms an intimate, autobiographical encounter into an image that oscillates between tenderness and estrangement, specificity and archetype. In Silver Shoes, this charged equilibrium situates the work within a lineage of erotic art that is less concerned with provocation than with revealing how desire, vulnerability, and self exposure have long functioned as engines of artistic invention.
Describing the Made in Heaven series, Koons noted that “it was about using the body as metaphor, again, for self-acceptance, the acceptance of sexuality, how we procreate, how we continue the species. It’s our genes, our DNA. I believe that there are forms of communication that are biological, which are really quite profound” (quoted M. Prather, “Interview with Jeff Koons,” in Regarding Warhol, Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2012, p. 197). In Silver Shoes, the titular element foregrounds the composition, foreshortened directly at the apparent surface of the canvas as Staller’s legs dangle in the air, feet crossed slightly at the ankles. Koons presents the scene frontally, revealing both his and Staller’s genitalia as well as their facial expressions—Staller’s face appears lost in ecstasy, a modern reenactment of Bernini’s St. Teresa in Ecstacy, which Koons’s intent gaze seems determined to capture. The scene appears to be one of post-coital bliss, contrasting with the more active positions of the other works from the Made in Heaven series. While erotic and explicit, the present work, and the series overall, are by no means pornographic. As the curator and art critic John Caldwell writes of the series, “A curious aspect of Koons’s new paintings is that they are not pornographic, even though they are explicit depictions of sexual activity… Probably the reason for this is that in one sense, they are too real. In an essay published in 1969, Susan Sontag pointed out that pornography is often placed outside the category of serious writing because it lacks fully developed characters. Her thesis was that the characters in a pornographic novel must be fairly generic figures in order to project our erotic desires onto them; too much literary specificity in its actors would make the characters into real people and interfere with our fantasies. In the case of Koons’s work, something like that seems to have happened” (“Jeff Koons: The Way We Live Now,” in Jeff Koons, exh. cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1992, p. 14).
“Like rococo art and Duchamp,” the scholar Daniela Salvioni writes, “Made in Heaven unabashedly places sex within the purview of art. It dares to broach the issue of pleasure in a context in which its appearance is rare, despite the fact that to please is an integral function of art. Moreover, it does so in an era besieged by hysterical puritanism, thus ushering in, in my opinion, a welcome defiance of repressive attacks” (“Jeff Koons’s Poetics of Class,” in ibid., p. 25). As Salvioni notes, erotic art has a long and distinguished art historical legacy, from prehistoric fertility talismans onward to the disguised eroticism of Fragonard. Koons himself makes both explicit and implicit reference to this history in the series: his work Manet references the French artist’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, while his Violet Ice (Kama Sutra) refers to the famous ancient Sanskrit text on sexuality and eroticism. In the present work, Koons makes more implicit reference to historic erotic art—the position of the couple recalls the pose of the two lovers in Michelangelo’s Leda and the Swan, later destroyed for its supposed indecent subject matter, as well as a work from the infamous series of prints made by Marcantonio Raimondi in collaboration with the writer and poet Pietro Aretino. Known as I modi, or The Sixteen Pleasures, this series of erotic prints was among the first to elevate erotic art into the art historical mainstream.
Silver Shoes also resembles another antecedent—the erotic paintings of Egon Schiele, particularly Man and Woman I (Lovers I) (1914, Private collection) and The Embrace (Lovers II) (1917, Belvedere, Vienna). In the latter, Schiele paints a self-portrait of himself and his wife Edith post-coitus. In these works, the artist explores “the fundamental rift between the sexes, and revolve around duality, unfulfilled desires and expectations, and the failure of relationships” as the art historian Kerstin Jesse writes (“From ‘Hell Brueghel’ to ‘Decipherer of Human Traits’: Egon Schiele’s ‘Late Works from 1914 to 1918,” in Changing Times: Egon Schiele’s Last Years, 1914-1918, exh. cat., Leopold Museum, Vienna, 2025, p. 24). Like Schiele, Koons transforms an intimate, autobiographical encounter into an image that oscillates between tenderness and estrangement, specificity and archetype. In Silver Shoes, this charged equilibrium situates the work within a lineage of erotic art that is less concerned with provocation than with revealing how desire, vulnerability, and self exposure have long functioned as engines of artistic invention.