Jeff Koons: Amore

Jeff Koons, Amore, 1988. Porcelain; 32 × 20 × 20 in. (81.3 × 50.8 × 50.8 cm). Lehmann-Art Ltd. © Jeff Koons

 

Amore, 1988

Porcelain

This porcelain sculpture depicts a Cabbage Patch Kid dressed in a bear costume to which Koons has added a heart sticker, a pot of jam, and other decorative elements. Such dolls were popular in the 1980s among children and adult collectors but in Koons’s hands the soft and loveable plush toy becomes a cold and hard statue. “Everything here is a metaphor for the viewer’s guilt and shame,” he commented. “Art can be a horrible discriminator. It can be used either to be uplifting and to give self-empowerment or to debase people and disempower them. And on the tightrope in between, there’s one’s cultural history. These images are aspects from my own, but everybody’s cultural history is perfect, it can’t be anything other than what it is- absolute perfection. Banality was the embracement of that.”

 

Resource : Whitney Museum of American Art