Jeff Koons

Sonnabend Gallery, New York
Private Collection, New York
Gagosian Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in August 2002

New York, Sonnabend Gallery; Cologne, Galerie Max Hetzler; Lausanne, Galerie Lehmann, Made in Heaven, November 1991 - May 1992 (ed. no. unknown)
San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Jeff Koons, 1992-93, pl. 61, n.p., illustrated in color (ed. no. 1/3, the present work)
New York, Gagosian Gallery, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol: Flowers, November - December 2002, p. 13, illustrated in color and illustrated in detail in color on the cover (ed. no. 1/3, the present work)

Angelika Muthesius, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, p. 142 (installation view at  Sonnabend Gallery, 1991), p. 143 and frontispiece (detail), illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum (and travelling), Jeff Koons Retrospektiv, 1992-93, p. 81, illustrated in color (Amsterdam and Stuttgart), and cat. no. 60, p. 78, illustrated in color (Aarhus) [ed. no. unknown]
Anthony d'Offay Gallery, The Jeff Koons Handbook, New York, 1992, p. 139, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Zurich, Kunsthaus Zurich (and travelling),  Zeichen & Wunder: Niko Pirosmani (1862 - 1918) und die Kunst der Gegenwart, 1995, cat. no. 8, p. 129, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Kunsthaus Bielefeld, Jeff Koons: Pictures 1980 - 2002, 2002, p. 24, illustrated in color (installation view) [ed. no. unknown]
Exh. Cat., New York, C&M Arts, Jeff Koons: Highlights of 25 Years, 2004, cat. no. 16, illustrated in color and illustrated in color in the chronology (ed. no. 2/3)
Exh. Cat., Riehen/Basel, Fondation Beyeler (and travelling), Flower Myth - From Vincent van Gogh to Jeff Koons, 2005, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
Exh. Cat., Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Flower as image: Araki, Arp, Blossfeldt, Cardoso, Cézanne, Corinth, Cunningham, Cook, Edmier, Ensor, Ernst, Fautrier, Frandsen, Gauguin, Goncharova, Hockney, Hume, Kelly, Klein, Koons, Kounellis, Léger, Manet, Mapplethorpe, Matisse, Milhazes, Mondrian, Monet, Monticel, 2004 – 2005, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)
Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 2007, p. 370, illustrated in color  (p. 380, illustrated in color in the 2009 edition) [ed. no. unknown]
Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern (and travelling), POP Life: Art in a Material World, 2009 - 2010, p. 140, illustrated in color (ed. no. 3/3)
Peter Richter, “I heart Jeff Koons “in BMW Magazine, Autumn, 2010, p. 55, illustrated in color
Exh. Cat., Frankfurt, Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Jeff Koons: The Sculptor, 2012, p. 140, illustrated in color (ed. no. 3/3)
Exh. Cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years, 2012, illustrated in color (ed. no. unknown)

This work is in excellent condition. In the central white flower, two flyspecks are evident on a yellow stamen left of center. Upon close inspection, some stable cracks, dating from the time of execution, are evident near seams and points of contact as follows: the bird's beak and the yellow stamen; the petals and the orange center of the red flower located at the center of the left side as illustrated; two petals in the pink flower at the center of the right edge; between the bird's body and the tail feathers. The blue paint on the green leaf above the blue tail and the white paint on the reverse of an upper right leaf date from the artist's studio. The work is slightly dusty overall in the deepest crevices of the design and behind some petals and leaves.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

From a lush bed of verdant green leaves, bright wildflowers spring forth, animating Jeff Koons’ Wall Relief with Bird (1991). Emanating vibrant hues of red, pink, white and yellow, these wondrous flowers appear to take on a life beyond their polychromed wood material; their petals reach outward and seemingly bloom before our eyes. At the center of the relief, the viewer observes an idyll of nature: a happy hummingbird flutters about the large white blossom, sipping of its nectar. Indeed to see a hummingbird—one of the animal kingdom’s most nimble and brightly colored members—is joyous, and in this instance the bird’s presence effortlessly completes Koons’ utopian image. Here, the natural world is an idealized paradise, and in turn, life and abundance are clearly celebrated. Koons further explains, “In Wall Relief with Bird there is a bird pollinating these large flowers. The imagery to me is about penetration. It’s also about fertility and pollination, and the eternal.” (Exh. Cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Regarding Warhol, 2012, p. 197) As such, Wall Relief with Bird is underscored by an omnipresent sense of sexuality. These seductive flowers are more than just brightly decorated and lively sculptures—they welcome pollination, opening outward from the wall to entice the viewer to move closer; they embody what author Daniel Pinchbeck rightly calls “an uncanny aliveness.” (Exh. Cat., New York, Gagosian Gallery, Jeff Koons Andy Warhol Flowers, 2001, p. 6)

Though Wall Relief with Bird thus stands on its own as an impressive and engaging work of art, it is all the more desirable for its inclusion in Koons’ famed body of work, Made in Heaven (1989-1991). This large, overtly sexual and often unapologetically graphic series grew from a simple seed when the Whitney Museum of American Art invited Koons to create a billboard for the 1989 media and contemporary art themed exhibition, Image World. Focusing on the pornography industry, Koons enlisted international porn star Ilona Staller as his collaborator, and the resulting billboard (a steamy movie advertisement featuring the duo) served as the inspiration for what became a prolific creative endeavor. Unveiled in its entirety at Sonnabend Gallery in 1991, Made in Heaven juxtaposed explicit sexual images of Koons and Staller—male orgasm, oral penetration and genitalia close-ups, to name but a few—with cheerful, brightly colored neo-kitsch statues of puppies and flowers. Three Puppies, Yorkshire Terriers and Large Vase of Flowers were, like Wall Relief with Bird, crucial and friendly counterpoints to the X-rated escapades detailed throughout the rest of the exhibition. The overall effect, needless to say, was shocking, and exhibition attendance skyrocketed.

More than that, with the Made in Heaven series, Koons successfully blurred the lines between art, life and media—and he did so to an extent far beyond that of any of his predecessors. His real life romance with Staller, most notably, was highly publicized as it grew from an artist-muse relationship to an eventual marriage. When they married in Budapest, the nuptial ceremony was covered by news meida globally in more than one thousand articles. Curator Scott Rothkopf succinctly reiterates this point by writing of Koons, “He responded to and helped shape the zeitgeist by abrading the distinction between the content of his work and the media spectacle it inspired.” (Exh. Cat., London, Tate Modern, Pop Life, 2009, p. 44)

Meanwhile, the zeitgeist of the '90s was also deeply defined by the transgressive agendas of Koons’ contemporaries in the face of political conservatism. Robert Mapplethorpe, for one, provoked outrage in the early part of the decade when he exhibited the homoerotic photographs of X Portfolio; Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ (1987) likewise met scandal when it was shown in 1989. But whereas Mapplethorpe’s and Serrano’s art faced censorship as a result of its taboo content, Koons’ Pop culture aesthetic at once differentiated his work and sidestepped political controversy. Art historian Katy Siegel explains, “The props, colors, and sentiments of Made in Heaven all speak of the middle class. The images were not rendered in voguish grainy video or artsy snapshots, but rather in high production-value craft media like glass and carved wood, as well as oil (inks) on canvas. And they were accompanied by super-saccharine sculptures of floral arrangements and dogs, looking as if they had wandered in from a Disney movie.” (Hans Werner Holzwarth, ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne, 2009, p. 310)

Wall Relief with Bird is no doubt one such sculpture. Not purely Edenic, but in actuality skewed by mass media, commercialism and artificiality, this relief ultimately displays what curator Mark Rosenthal calls, “a kind of unnatural glitz.” Like Andy Warhol’s flower paintings before (which Rosenthal considers to “have a kind of false exquisiteness in comparison to any flowers from life”), Koons’ floral relief similarly conveys a sort of synthetic lushness. (Exh. Cat. New York, Op. Cit., p. 135) This falsity, it can be argued, has also infiltrated our cultural reception of sex. Koons’ decision to contrast cartoonish pets, birds and flowers with images of raw sexuality therefore functions as commentary on our naïve relationship to sex—this is a dramatic clash of fantasy and reality. Curator John Caldwell clarifies, “Sex, probably more than any other element in our culture, exists for us today as an amalgam of what we know from experience and what we know from the image world of television, advertising and the movies.” (Exh. Cat., San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Jeff Koons, 1992, p.140)

Of course, Koons’ romantic portrayal of sexuality and love is not entirely a contemporary phenomenon. On the contrary, it is informed by rich artistic traditions rooted in the Baroque, Rococo and Romantic periods. The atmospheric green, white and pink palette of Wall Relief with Bird specifically calls to mind the blissful gardens of Fragonard’s lovers. Its evocation of the Rococo masterpieces is so powerful that it comes as no surprise Koons began to work with genuine living flowers (notably the critically acclaimed and monumental Puppy of 1992) directly after creating Wall Relief with Bird.