The Achievement of Visual Equilibrium in a Work of Art Is

Have you lot ever seen a dog and so big that it almost reaches the ceiling? Ane that looks like one of those helium balloons in the shape of a dog – that seem to always end up bumping and floating forth the ceiling? Merely, the balloon dogs we will explore in this article are from Contemporary artist Jeff Koons' stainless-steel sculptures, and they practise not float. Let u.s.a. have a closer expect.

Table of Contents

• 1 Artist Abstruse: Who Is Jeff Koons?
• 2 The Airship Dogs by Jeff Koons in Context
  • 2.1 Contextual Assay: A Brief Socio-Historical Overview
  • 2.2 Celebration Serial (1994 – 2000)
• 3 Formal Analysis: A Brief Compositional Overview
  • 3.1 Field of study Matter
  • 3.2 Scale and Textile
• 4 Critique: Is Information technology Art?
• v A Pop Icon
• 6 Oftentimes Asked Questions
  • half-dozen.i What Are the Balloon Dogs?
  • 6.2 How Many Balloon Dogs Did Jeff Koons Brand?
  • 6.3 What Are Jeff Koons' Balloon Dogs Made Of?
  • half dozen.4 What Is the Cost of Jeff Koons' Airship Dogs?

Artist Abstruse: Who Is Jeff Koons?

Jeffrey Lynn Koons is an American creative person who was born on 21 January 1955, in York, Pennsylvania, where he as well lives and works, including New York City. He painted from an early on age having been inspired by Salvador Dalí. Koons studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the Schoolhouse of the Fine art Institute of Chicago. He is a Gimmicky creative person well-known for his big-scale sculptures that are Popular-Cultural icons depicting items of mass media, such every bit toys, birthday gifts, ornaments, and diverse other paraphernalia we would find in stores.

The Balloon Dogs by Jeff Koons in Context

The Balloon Dogs (1994 to 2000) by Jeff Koons come in five colors, namely, blue, magenta, orange, red, and yellow. They are what you volition find for an viii-year-old's altogether present, however, this is exactly what they are all about. The Balloon Dogs bear upon the idea of celebration. They are worth millions of dollars, in fact, Airship Dog (Orangish) (1994 to 2000) was sold for $58.4 one thousand thousand.

Koons has not only made balloon dogs, just a whole menagerie of other animals like monkeys, rabbits, and swans, among other accessories like hearts, flowers, and jewelry.

Nosotros will explore in more than detail Koons' Balloon Dogs past first discussing a flake of a historical contextual around why he created these sculptures and that they are a function of his series chosen Celebration. We will then discuss the stylistic approach taken past the artist by discussing the discipline affair, hands understood when we look at information technology, likewise as the fabric he utilized.

Artist	Jeffrey Lynn Koons
Date of Product	1994 to 2000
Medium	Mirror-finished stainless steel with a translucent blanket of color paint
Genre	Popular Art, Neo-Pop Art, Conceptual Art
Menstruum	Contemporary Art
Dimensions	307.3 x 363.2 x114.3 centimeters (Balloon Domestic dog – Blue)
Series / Versions	Five versions (Blue, Magenta, Orange, Blood-red, Yellow) as part of the "Celebration" Series (1994 to 2011)
Where Is It housed?	Exhibited worldwide
What It Is Worth	Over $l million

Contextual Analysis: A Brief Socio-Historical Overview

The Airship Dogs (1994 to 2000) by Jeff Koons is part of the creative person'south series called Celebrations, which he started in 1993. Information technology consists of a variety of sculptures and paintings focusing on the thought of celebration, and items we would utilize for celebrations like holidays or parties, especially altogether parties. Against the backdrop of Koons' creative career, the playful notwithstanding quite daunting large balloon dogs are continuations of his style.

He has utilized inflatables since the 1970s and has ever explored the question of consumerism and the "article culture" as it is called.

Some of his primeval sculptural works come up from his series called Inflatables (c. 1970s), which consisted of flowers and toys bought from shops in New York where he moved to during 1977. During the 1980s he started several exhibitions showcasing his veer towards conceptual art. We see this in his Equilibrium Serial (1983), which featured basketballs suspended in distilled saline water in what appears to be a fish tank. Alongside this were posters depicting famous Basketball players.

3 Ball Total Equilibrium Tank by Jeff Koons, Tate Liverpool, England;Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Autonomously from Basketballs, Koons also utilized daily cleaning equipment like vacuum cleaners, seen in his The New Series (the 1970s). These showcased vacuum cleaners like Hoovers likewise in Perspex cases. The manner Koons arranged the items, which he exhibited in 1980 at the New Museum of Gimmicky Art in New York, likewise touched on aspects of how items like these would exist housed in a shop or showroom.

Koons' Banality Series (1988) was some other famous and quite controversial exhibition. It showcased large-scale sculptures of celebrities like Michael Jackson, but with the undertone of it being like a piece of ornament or equally some sources describe it "collectible figurines".

What made this series controversial were lawsuits confronting the artist due to some imagery copied from original images.

A famous slice from this collection is Michael Jackson and Bubbling (1988) depicting Jackson with his pet monkey called Bubbling. This was reportedly taken from a photographic source and made into a sculpture that is larger than life-size. Furthermore, Koons added gold in the sculpture because he aimed to convey a sense of godliness in Michael Jackson connecting the idea of pop icons with the idea of worship and iconography.

Jeff Koons at the Vanity Fair kickoff part for the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival;David Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Another famous slice from this series is Pink Panther (1988) which depicts the popular Hollywood starlet Jayne Mansfield holding the adored Pink Panther. It is made from glazed porcelain and stands 41 inches tall. The figure appears without any upper garments to cover herself and her breasts are exposed as she holds the Pink Panther in her left arm.

She is covering her right chest with her correct hand. She looks at the viewers with a charming smile as if she is soaking up the attention, but the facial expression of the Pink Panther appears sullen. Forth her waist, we see a light green dress barely roofing her buttocks.

This piece contains sexual overtones and as Koons has been reported to country that it was aimed to exist about masturbation.

Made In Heaven (1989) is another controversial series past Koons, depicting himself in photographs and sculptures with his and so-wife, Ilona Staller, in explicit and sexual poses. Many people disliked this series considering of its content, and some regarded it as an expression of ideas of shame. Koons patently destroyed this series during the custody case between him and Staller for their son, Ludwig.

Celebration Series (1994 – 2000)

During the early 1990s, Koons started what we have come to know as his signature sculptural pieces, or among the nearly prominent of his sculptural pieces, the Commemoration series. These were also inspired by children'southward toys and blow-up balloon animals, especially with his son Ludwig nonetheless very young at that time.

As previously mentioned, the series included pieces like flowers, hearts, Easter eggs, and an assortment of balloon animals. At that place is a playfulness to the sculptures and an inherent play on other ideas like life and decease and the loss of innocence from childhood that about turns into this want for material things and condition.

Koons created 20 different sculptures and xvi oil paintings in his "Commemoration Series" and is reportedly notwithstanding in the production procedure of some of the sculptural pieces.

Of these, there are different versions in a variety of colors, including the laurels-winning Cracked Egg (1994 to 2006), Diamond (1994 to 2005), Tulips (1995 to 2004), Airship Flowers (1995 to 2000), Hanging Center (1995 to 1998), and the well-known Balloon Dogs (1994 to 2000) among many others.

Mirrored bubble sculpture (detail) by Jeff Koons at the Potsdamer Platz, Berlin (Marline-Dietrich Platz)/Germany;Jeff Koons, CC By 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Formal Analysis: A Brief Compositional Overview

The Balloon Dog sculpture comes in v dissimilar colors, or versions, namely, Bluish, Magenta, Orange, Cherry-red, and Yellow. It seemingly reflects the act of how we would be able to choice and choose our ain colors if these were real balloon animals blown up by a clown at a birthday party. Below we accept a closer expect at Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog sculptures and just what they are made of and what they maybe stand for if anything.

Subject Matter

Each Jeff Koons Balloon Dog appears identical, sporting its bright colors. When we look at each one it resembles a perfect, albeit giant size, airship dog. It stands on all four legs looking ahead as if it is going to playfully run or bound any infinitesimal.

The end tip of the "balloon" makes its brusk pencil-shaped tail and the opening of the balloon, where the knot would become, makes a small snout for its olfactory organ.

If we wait at the Balloon Dog, all of them, we nigh desire to touch on it and experience its credible softness, but if we movement closer, we are not but met with its larger-than-life size and luminosity just nosotros are met with a difficult, reflective surface.

Scale and Material

Each Jeff Koons Balloon Dog measures around 307.3 x 363.ii x 114.three centimeters (around 10 feet) and it weighs around a ton – equally nosotros previously mentioned, information technology is a life-size canis familiaris. All five dogs are made, or shall we say engineered, from mirror-polished stainless steel, which is then given a translucent glaze of colored paint, namely, Bluish, Magenta, Xanthous, Blood-red, and Orange. The mirror-polished surface on the stainless steel, including the paint, gives the Balloon Dog that balloon-like reflective surface.

It also adds to the richness of the entire construction, almost cartoon us in to appoint with it just similar a real toy would appeal to our senses and want to play.

Critique: Is Information technology Art?

Jeff Koons' artwork has received considerable critique throughout the art communities and public; at that place are lovers and haters. I of the of import questions that have bounced effectually most of Jeff Koons' art is, "Is it art?". The artist himself has been widely successful and received significant remuneration for several of his sculptures. He has also become quite pop among the masses.

For case, in 2013, Balloon Dog (Orange) was sold for $58.iv meg at Christie'south Post-War and Gimmicky Fine art Evening sale sale. It reportedly reached the record of the highest paid price for an artist that is even so living. Koons' Tulips were sold for $33.7 one thousand thousand at this same auction.

Many question the "adroitness" of Jeff Koons' piece of work and whether information technology falls within the realm of artwork and what subjects denote fine art. It also questions the idea of high art and low fine art, and his sculptures stand up tall and quite abruptly in your confront as if to say they are here to upend the traditional notions of what art should be and how it should look.

Jeff Koons' art has oft been likened to being kitsch inside the Postmodern art scene.

The word kitsch is of German language origin used to describe objects that were of cheaper, more mass-produced, and "low brow" quality compared to the quality we would find from "high art". It is often objected that they are popular merely to the masses and not a more refined group of admirers. The idea of kitsch also has irony in its conveyance, and perhaps that is what we find in Jeff Koons' and so many other Pop Art and Gimmicky artists of the times.

In fact, nosotros encounter this type of play on "high" and "low" art when Balloon Domestic dog (Magenta) was put on display in 2008 in the Château de Versailles in France, a stark contrast to the elaborate Baroque compages and traditional modes of art from the past. Although the Baroque period was itself quite rich in ornament and gilded grandeur, maybe something the Baroque past and Balloon Dog nowadays have in common?

Information technology as well points usa to the inherent symbolism in Koons' piece of work if any at all. While we know the big Airship Dog represents something that takes u.s. dorsum to a time of babyhood and commemoration, information technology may even symbolize a sense of innocence, however, with the mode it has been synthetic, and to the size, it could also symbolize the critique of mass culture and commoditization.

Koons has been reported to state he does not intend any other meanings in his works other than information technology just being what you see. He said, "A viewer might at starting time see irony in my piece of work…but I see none at all. Irony causes also much critical contemplation". For Jeff Koons' Balloon Dog, the artist is widely quoted in his explanation of why he maybe constructed these, saying:

"I've always enjoyed balloon animals because they're like us. Nosotros're balloons. You lot take a breath and you inhale, information technology's an optimism. You lot exhale, and it's kind of a symbol of expiry".

A Pop Icon

Since the Commemoration Serial Koons have continued making his Pop-Cultural sculptures, for example, his Play-Doh (1994 to 2004), Hulk (Organ) (2004 to 2014), and the more than recent Seated Ballerina (2017) as part of his Antiquity Series, among many others. The artist has worked with and inspired many other pop icons like singers Lady Gaga and Jay Z and other visual artists like the British Damien Hirst, from the Immature British Artists grouping.

He has become like the embodiment of celebration amidst the celebrities simply has washed well for himself having been given achievements, for example, in 2008 the School of the Art Found in Chicago awarded him with an honorary doctorate. In 2002 he became the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor and in 2007 the Officier.

He has also received numerous awards, namely, the BZ Cultural Award (2000) and Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture (2001) in Berlin, the Wollaston Honour (2008) from the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the U.S. Country Department'southward Medal of Arts (2013), the Gilt Plate Award of the American University of Achievement (2014), and during 2017 he was awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Visual Culture every bit part of the almanac Honorary Membership Award through the Edgar Wind Club.

Jeff Koons is almost like a Willy Wonka of the art world – someone who creates rich and colorful objects for the public to please in, although in this case, it is not chocolate just instead a factory of shiny sculptures that all appear equally if they have come out of a fantasy book and doubled or tripled in size. Indeed, Jeff Koons' art reminds united states of america of our childhood – imagining a grandiosity that falls outside of what is real.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Are the Airship Dogs?

The Balloon Dogs (1994 to 2000) past Jeff Koons are five dogs that appear similar blown-upwardly balloon animals. They are a part of the artist'south series called Celebrations, which he started in 1993. It consists of a variety of sculptures and paintings focusing on the idea of celebration and items we would purchase or see like inflatables, hearts, Easter eggs, flowers, besides as the type of toys children would be fond of playing with.

How Many Balloon Dogs Did Jeff Koons Make?

There are five versions of Jeff Koons' Airship Dogs (1994 to 2000). The versions all announced identical in shape and size, but they are in five different colors, namely, blue, magenta, orangish, red, and yellow.

What Are Jeff Koons' Balloon Dogs Made Of?

Jeff Koons' Balloon Dogs are made from mirror-polished stainless steel and painted over with a coating of translucent paint in the respective colors we see in all v versions.

What Is the Cost of Jeff Koons' Balloon Dogs?

Jeff Koons has been one of the highest-paid living artists and his artworks sell for millions of dollars. In 2013, Balloon Dog (Orange) was sold for $58.4 meg at Christie'southward Mail service-War and Contemporary Art Evening auction sale and his Tulips were sold for $33.7 million at this aforementioned auction.

urestihurs1995.blogspot.com

Source: https://artincontext.org/jeff-koons-balloon-dog/

Share this post