Lot Essay
Executed in 1986, Jim Beam--Model A Ford Pick-Up Truck forms part of Jeff Koons' Luxury and Degradation series and was shown at his exhibition of the same name in the Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Los Angeles. Luxury and Degradation consisted of a range of works and paintings which appropriated the forms of the ads and paraphernalia of the alcohol trade. Paintings mimicked posters for Gordon's Gin and Fra Angelico, while stainless steel sculptures had been made copying traveling cocktail kits and Jim Beam promotional novelty bottles in the form of icons of American industry; for instance the Model A Ford.
Koons had first been drawn to the Jim Beam models after seeing a ceramic example in a store window: "I thought: 'This would be a great ready-made,'" he recalled. "So I cast it and went back to the company and had it filled with bourbon and sealed with the tax stamp. Because, for me, the bourbon was the soul and the tax-stamp seal was like the interface to the soul. It was about creating something that you'd desire. I wanted to create work that people would be attracted to" (Koons, 2000, quoted in D. Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists, London, 2002, p. 340). But that attraction came with its own cautionary barbs. This was perhaps Koons' most overtly political series. The artist himself explained that it was:
"A panoramic view of society. I wanted to show how luxury and abstraction are used to debase people and take away their economic and political power. The underlying theme paralleled the alcoholic... I worked in stainless steel. That was the first time I worked with it. It was perfect coordination because stainless steel was the only metal that would keep the alcohol preserved forever. But I also liked the fake luxury of stainless steel. It has always been the luxury of the proletariat. It was to seduce" (Koons, quoted in A. Haden-Guest, "Interview: Jeff Koons," pp. 12-36, A. Muthesius (ed.), Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, pp. 20-21).
Koons' work has long sought to remove the restrictions imposed by cultural hierarchies, the way in which taste is formed by self-appointed arbitrators who create a system essentially based on snobbery. By creating the gleaming, desirable mock-silver Jim Beam-- Model A Ford Pick-Up Truck from functional, practical steel, Koons was deliberately presenting an emphatically commercial knickknack as art, as a reliquary to our contemporary age. It celebrates America's great past and asks its viewers to enjoy its present:
"Anyone can feel that art can either be something that is very generous or something that could be a segregator. And the way it segregates is to make them feel uncomfortable about their own cultural history. So I wanted to make works that just embraced everybody's own cultural history and made everybody feel that their history was perfect just the way it was" (Koons, quoted in R. Koolhaas & H.U. Obrist, "Interview," pp. 61-84, Jeff Koons: Retrospective, exh.cat., Oslo, 2004, p. 67).
Koons had first been drawn to the Jim Beam models after seeing a ceramic example in a store window: "I thought: 'This would be a great ready-made,'" he recalled. "So I cast it and went back to the company and had it filled with bourbon and sealed with the tax stamp. Because, for me, the bourbon was the soul and the tax-stamp seal was like the interface to the soul. It was about creating something that you'd desire. I wanted to create work that people would be attracted to" (Koons, 2000, quoted in D. Sylvester, Interviews with American Artists, London, 2002, p. 340). But that attraction came with its own cautionary barbs. This was perhaps Koons' most overtly political series. The artist himself explained that it was:
"A panoramic view of society. I wanted to show how luxury and abstraction are used to debase people and take away their economic and political power. The underlying theme paralleled the alcoholic... I worked in stainless steel. That was the first time I worked with it. It was perfect coordination because stainless steel was the only metal that would keep the alcohol preserved forever. But I also liked the fake luxury of stainless steel. It has always been the luxury of the proletariat. It was to seduce" (Koons, quoted in A. Haden-Guest, "Interview: Jeff Koons," pp. 12-36, A. Muthesius (ed.), Jeff Koons, Cologne, 1992, pp. 20-21).
Koons' work has long sought to remove the restrictions imposed by cultural hierarchies, the way in which taste is formed by self-appointed arbitrators who create a system essentially based on snobbery. By creating the gleaming, desirable mock-silver Jim Beam-- Model A Ford Pick-Up Truck from functional, practical steel, Koons was deliberately presenting an emphatically commercial knickknack as art, as a reliquary to our contemporary age. It celebrates America's great past and asks its viewers to enjoy its present:
"Anyone can feel that art can either be something that is very generous or something that could be a segregator. And the way it segregates is to make them feel uncomfortable about their own cultural history. So I wanted to make works that just embraced everybody's own cultural history and made everybody feel that their history was perfect just the way it was" (Koons, quoted in R. Koolhaas & H.U. Obrist, "Interview," pp. 61-84, Jeff Koons: Retrospective, exh.cat., Oslo, 2004, p. 67).