Jeff Koons Guardian Layout
King of Kitsch: Jeff Koons at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art
The Guardian
This was the second piece of work commissioned by JB Pelham PR. I was tasked with designing a front cover for the Guardian Arts supplement, this time publicising Jeff Koons sculptural works on the Cantor Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This cover feature also contained an interview between Michel Houllebecq and Jeff Koons.
Jeff Koons at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
With its breathtaking, panoramic views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, the Cantor Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art may strike you as an excellent place to mount a seasonal outdoor sculpture show, which it does every year. In truth, it is an inhospitable site for sculpture, as demonstrated by the 2008 display: three wonderful, previously unexhibited works by the celebrated Pop artist Jeff Koons. Each of these sculptures is a greatly enlarged, glossily lacquered, stainless-steel representation of something small: a toy dog made of twisted-together balloons; a chocolate valentine heart wrapped in red foil, standing en pointe; and a silhouette of Piglet from a “Winnie the Pooh” colouring book, randomly coloured as if by a small child.
Seen in an indoor gallery, the elephantine, shiny metallic “Balloon Dog (Yellow),” which rises to 10 feet at its highest point, would have a weirdly imposing, slightly menacing presence. On the roof it appears dwarfed by the vast sky and by the open expanses of space to the south and west of the museum.
The intimacy of Mr. Koons’s sculpture is also diminished. Perfectionist attention to detail is one of his work’s most compelling aspects: note the exactingly formed knot that serves as the balloon dog’s nose, or the folds, pleats and stretch marks in the heart’s wrapper. The distracting outdoor environment, though, discourages careful, contemplative looking.
Left: Balloon Dog at MMA, by Jeff Koons
