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Lot Essay
Fusing the readymade with the art historical tradition, Jeff Koons’s Gazing Ball (Courbet Sleep) is an important example from the artist’s Gazing Ball Paintings series first exhibited in 2015. Koons first utilized his now-iconic gazing balls in a sculptural series where casts of casts of canonical works of European sculpture balanced blue gazing balls at key positions. While working on that series, Koons came to a realization, noting how “with sculpture, you feel a constant polarity between the biological and Platonism. The sculpture also places an emphasis on form. With the paintings, you have a more ancient dialogue” (J. Koons, quoted in B. Powers, “A Talk with Jeff Koons,” Art News, Spring 2016, p. 29). For his Gazing Ball paintings, Koons recalled the effect of painted three-dimensional surfaces, from the caves of Lascaux to the polychrome statues of Greek antiquity, and how two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms were brought together. “The Gazing Ball sculptures have the same confrontation. There’s a dialogue taking place about the humanism of art and how important connectivity is in our lives. I wanted to make work that would add to the dialogue of the readymade and the concept of objective art” (J. Koons, quoted in ibid.).
With Gazing Ball (Courbet Sleep), the artist creates a painted visual replica of the French artist’s infamous The Sleepers painting, now held at the Petit Palais, Paris. The painting, which depicts the then-scandalous scene of two nude recumbent women entwined together upon a bed and surrounded with Empire style decadence, appears to be an exact facsimile of the original, every detail hand-replicated including even a painted line for every crack on the original. Koons’s version is however is completely flat, omitting any painterly impasto used in the original. Koons’s most significant intervention is the placement of a reflective spherical blue gazing ball against the painted backdrop. Poised just below the centerline, the ball partially obscures the raised rear of one of the painted women whilst simultaneously reflecting this intimate region onto its surface. Describing his gazing balls, Koons notes that they are “devices of connecting. I want to participate, I always just wanted to be involved in a dialogue with the avant-garde. This is my family, these are the artists I have interest in, the joy that has enriched my life. I enjoy participating in the dialogue and I want to bring something to the table” (J. Koons, quoted in A. Needham, “Jeff Koons on His Gazing Ball Paintings: ‘It’s not about copying,” The Guardian, 9 November 2015, online [accessed 15 October 2015]).
Koons identifies the head of his Rabbit, one of his most famous works, as the original gazing ball. He connects the use of the ball to Marcel Duchamp, the inventor of the readymade and a steadfast influence for Koons: “The gazing ball is like Duchamp’s urinal in that it’s a confrontational object, but it’s also very retinal” (J. Koons, quoted in ibid.). Used in the present work, the experience is about the viewer, forcing the audience to participate within and identify their own relationship with the image. In this participatory tone, the Gazing Ball paintings are also reminiscent of Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds which float freely around their given spaces, reflecting everything around them and interacting with observers. While the gazing ball “represents the vastness of the universe and at the same time the intimacy of right here, right now,” the painting is not a mere visual reproduction of the visual experience of Courbet’s original, but a conceptual embodiment of the painting’s essence.
Commissioned by Khalil Bey, the Ottoman envoy to France, Courbet’s The Sleepers was then a scandalous image, and joined two similarly controversial paintings also in Khalil-Bey’s collection—Courbet’s L’Origine du monde and Ingres’ The Turkish Bath. This trio created a boudoir salon exhibiting erotic female subjects, recalling Titian’s Poesie paintings from two centuries prior. Jeff Koons’s intervention in placing a reflective ball with the painting recreates the original dynamism of the commission, where the painting was meant to be in intimate dialogue with the onlooker and other paintings placed in its environs.
Gazing Ball (Courbet’s Sleep) provides a scintillating view into Jeff Koons’s deep art historical knowledge as he innovates upon the notion of the readymade, appropriating canonical subjects in the tradition of Duchamp while interpreting the experience of his viewer through cannily placed reflections. “The experience is about you, your desires, your participation, your relationship with the image” (J. Koons, quoted in ibid.).
With Gazing Ball (Courbet Sleep), the artist creates a painted visual replica of the French artist’s infamous The Sleepers painting, now held at the Petit Palais, Paris. The painting, which depicts the then-scandalous scene of two nude recumbent women entwined together upon a bed and surrounded with Empire style decadence, appears to be an exact facsimile of the original, every detail hand-replicated including even a painted line for every crack on the original. Koons’s version is however is completely flat, omitting any painterly impasto used in the original. Koons’s most significant intervention is the placement of a reflective spherical blue gazing ball against the painted backdrop. Poised just below the centerline, the ball partially obscures the raised rear of one of the painted women whilst simultaneously reflecting this intimate region onto its surface. Describing his gazing balls, Koons notes that they are “devices of connecting. I want to participate, I always just wanted to be involved in a dialogue with the avant-garde. This is my family, these are the artists I have interest in, the joy that has enriched my life. I enjoy participating in the dialogue and I want to bring something to the table” (J. Koons, quoted in A. Needham, “Jeff Koons on His Gazing Ball Paintings: ‘It’s not about copying,” The Guardian, 9 November 2015, online [accessed 15 October 2015]).
Koons identifies the head of his Rabbit, one of his most famous works, as the original gazing ball. He connects the use of the ball to Marcel Duchamp, the inventor of the readymade and a steadfast influence for Koons: “The gazing ball is like Duchamp’s urinal in that it’s a confrontational object, but it’s also very retinal” (J. Koons, quoted in ibid.). Used in the present work, the experience is about the viewer, forcing the audience to participate within and identify their own relationship with the image. In this participatory tone, the Gazing Ball paintings are also reminiscent of Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds which float freely around their given spaces, reflecting everything around them and interacting with observers. While the gazing ball “represents the vastness of the universe and at the same time the intimacy of right here, right now,” the painting is not a mere visual reproduction of the visual experience of Courbet’s original, but a conceptual embodiment of the painting’s essence.
Commissioned by Khalil Bey, the Ottoman envoy to France, Courbet’s The Sleepers was then a scandalous image, and joined two similarly controversial paintings also in Khalil-Bey’s collection—Courbet’s L’Origine du monde and Ingres’ The Turkish Bath. This trio created a boudoir salon exhibiting erotic female subjects, recalling Titian’s Poesie paintings from two centuries prior. Jeff Koons’s intervention in placing a reflective ball with the painting recreates the original dynamism of the commission, where the painting was meant to be in intimate dialogue with the onlooker and other paintings placed in its environs.
Gazing Ball (Courbet’s Sleep) provides a scintillating view into Jeff Koons’s deep art historical knowledge as he innovates upon the notion of the readymade, appropriating canonical subjects in the tradition of Duchamp while interpreting the experience of his viewer through cannily placed reflections. “The experience is about you, your desires, your participation, your relationship with the image” (J. Koons, quoted in ibid.).