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Lot Essay
An opulent feast for the senses, Baroque Egg with Bow (Blue/Turquoise) (1994-2008) is an icon of Jeff Koons’s practice. One of five uniquely-coloured versions, it offers a dazzling spectacle of wonder, towering majestically before the viewer. Light bounces off its glistening surface, animating the immaculate smooth sheen of the ribbon and the crinkled folds of its seductive blue wrapping. Engineered to precision over a fourteen-year period, it is a feat of technical virtuosity, taking its cue from the intricate splendour of the Baroque. One of the central works in Koons’s landmark Celebration series, it is contemporaneous with masterpieces such as Balloon Dog (1994-2000), Balloon Flower (1995-2000), Hanging Heart (1994-2006) and Tulips (1995-2004). In these staggering creations, the artist sought to capture a sense of childlike joy and awe, using signifiers for celebratory milestones to invoke a kind of spiritual rapture. Here, he combines the egg’s connotations of rebirth and eternity with the tantalising promise of Easter treats, enticing the viewer to peel back its luxuriant exterior.
The idea for the Celebration series came about when Koons was working on a calendar for the dealer Anthony d’Offay in 1991. ‘I shot these different images and soon realised that this was too good, that I had more than a calendar here,’ he recalls. ‘I had a whole body of work’ (quoted in Jeff Koons, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2012, p. 34). The result would come to represent the artist’s most elaborate series, comprising sixteen monumental sculptures and sixteen large-format oil paintings. As well as eggs for Easter, hearts for Valentine’s day and celebratory flowers and diamonds, the artist made reference to the joy of children’s birthday parties, depicting hats, cake and gleaming heaps of Play-Doh. These subjects took on a new personal resonance for him following the birth of his son in 1992, and his subsequent divorce two years later. ‘It was a way for me to communicate with him how much I was missing him,’ he explained (quoted in H. W. Holzwarth, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 2009, p. 16).
Within the series, the egg came to assume a special significance for Koons. As well as Baroque Egg with Bow, the artist produced Bowl with Eggs (1994-2009), Cracked Egg (1994-2006)—an example of which resides in the Broad Foundation, Los Angeles—and Smooth Egg with Bow (1994-2009). A universal symbol of birth, resurrection, fertility and creation, the egg invoked grand existential themes, its form harnessed by artists ranging from Constantin Brâncuși and Salvador Dalí to Lucio Fontana. Koons delighted in playing with opposing connotations, juxtaposing the egg’s fleeting fragility with the indestructible medium of mirror-polished stainless steel. ‘I was interested in the dialogue with nature and aspects of the eternal, the here and now, the physical with the ephemeral,’ he explains. ‘... So this balance of the symmetrical and asymmetrical, a sense of the fertile, and a sense of the eternal through biology and procreation, and then, on the other hand, you have the sense of the spiritual, very ethereal, eternal: the polarities’ (quoted in Jeff Koons: Celebration, exh. cat., Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2008, p. 87).
At the same time, however, the work’s lustrous materiality taps into another key theme of Koons’s practice: the spectre of desire. Through the sheer sensory perfection of his technique, the artist highlights our propensity for seduction. The sculpture’s flawless coloured surface is irresistibly tactile, conjuring the rustle of foil and the sleek curl of satin. The humble egg becomes a fetishist icon, impelling us—like a child in a sweetshop—to reach out and touch it. The Baroque, for Koons, offered a way of aligning this material decadence with his own metaphysical aspirations, evoking the excess of craftsmanship and ornament that flourished during the Counter-Reformation. ‘I use the Baroque to show the public that we are in the realm of the spiritual, the eternal,’ he explains. ‘The church uses the Baroque to manipulate and seduce, but in return it does give the public a spiritual experience’ (quoted in A. Muthesius, Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 158). Here, we are transported to a world of transcendental longing: a fantastical rhapsody immortalised in shimmering blue.
The idea for the Celebration series came about when Koons was working on a calendar for the dealer Anthony d’Offay in 1991. ‘I shot these different images and soon realised that this was too good, that I had more than a calendar here,’ he recalls. ‘I had a whole body of work’ (quoted in Jeff Koons, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2012, p. 34). The result would come to represent the artist’s most elaborate series, comprising sixteen monumental sculptures and sixteen large-format oil paintings. As well as eggs for Easter, hearts for Valentine’s day and celebratory flowers and diamonds, the artist made reference to the joy of children’s birthday parties, depicting hats, cake and gleaming heaps of Play-Doh. These subjects took on a new personal resonance for him following the birth of his son in 1992, and his subsequent divorce two years later. ‘It was a way for me to communicate with him how much I was missing him,’ he explained (quoted in H. W. Holzwarth, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 2009, p. 16).
Within the series, the egg came to assume a special significance for Koons. As well as Baroque Egg with Bow, the artist produced Bowl with Eggs (1994-2009), Cracked Egg (1994-2006)—an example of which resides in the Broad Foundation, Los Angeles—and Smooth Egg with Bow (1994-2009). A universal symbol of birth, resurrection, fertility and creation, the egg invoked grand existential themes, its form harnessed by artists ranging from Constantin Brâncuși and Salvador Dalí to Lucio Fontana. Koons delighted in playing with opposing connotations, juxtaposing the egg’s fleeting fragility with the indestructible medium of mirror-polished stainless steel. ‘I was interested in the dialogue with nature and aspects of the eternal, the here and now, the physical with the ephemeral,’ he explains. ‘... So this balance of the symmetrical and asymmetrical, a sense of the fertile, and a sense of the eternal through biology and procreation, and then, on the other hand, you have the sense of the spiritual, very ethereal, eternal: the polarities’ (quoted in Jeff Koons: Celebration, exh. cat., Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2008, p. 87).
At the same time, however, the work’s lustrous materiality taps into another key theme of Koons’s practice: the spectre of desire. Through the sheer sensory perfection of his technique, the artist highlights our propensity for seduction. The sculpture’s flawless coloured surface is irresistibly tactile, conjuring the rustle of foil and the sleek curl of satin. The humble egg becomes a fetishist icon, impelling us—like a child in a sweetshop—to reach out and touch it. The Baroque, for Koons, offered a way of aligning this material decadence with his own metaphysical aspirations, evoking the excess of craftsmanship and ornament that flourished during the Counter-Reformation. ‘I use the Baroque to show the public that we are in the realm of the spiritual, the eternal,’ he explains. ‘The church uses the Baroque to manipulate and seduce, but in return it does give the public a spiritual experience’ (quoted in A. Muthesius, Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 158). Here, we are transported to a world of transcendental longing: a fantastical rhapsody immortalised in shimmering blue.