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"I like to think that when you leave the room, the art leaves the room. Art is about your own possibilities as a human being. It’s about your own excitement, your own potential, and what you can become. It affirms your existence."
—Jeff KoonsContrasting high and low artforms, Jeff Koons’ Gazing Ball (Demeter), executed in 2014, fuses an iconic work from the history of art with an artifact of banal consumerism. Appropriating one of the most iconic sculptural forms of the classical past, Koons recasts Pheidias’ Demeter from the East pediment of the Parthenon, today in the collection of the British Museum, as a decorative ornament cut off from the lofty pretensions of the aesthetic academicism. Koons’ outrageous democratization of taste radically celebrates visual culture of all forms, high and low.
Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q., 1919. Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Image: © CNAC/MNAM, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Art Reseource, NY, Arwork: © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / Estate of Marcel Duchamp Celebrated for its daring facsimiles of art historical icons, the Gazing Ball series presents viewers with contemporary impressions in the manner of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades and his radical reinterpretations of historically significant artworks. The Gazing Ball works are part of the lineage of the avant-garde but are firmly rooted in the cultural milieu of the American middle class. Koons presents the gazing ball as talisman of his hometown of York, Pennsylvania, where the glass ornaments are ubiquitous accoutrements of suburban lawns and gardens. Pairing the gazing ball with an image of antiquity whose very nature mirrors the vaunted pantheon of art history, the spectacular finish of the ball is juxtaposed with its popular use as pedestrian decoration and conflates the ordinary with the surreal, fueling the debate about taste that is paradigmatic of Koons’s conceptual project. The artist proposes an equilibrium between contemporary mass culture and the ivory towers of art history; arguing for the appreciation of quotidian imagery, Koons questions the arbitrary distinctions between high and low art, positioning his output firmly between these predetermined aesthetic poles.
Pheidias, Demeter and Persephone, 438BC-432 BC. The Parthenon Sculptures, British Museum © The Trustees of the British Museum Essential to Koons’s practice is the consideration of the viewer's participation in the experience of the artwork. Informed by Alois Riegl’s writings on the relationship between artwork and viewer, Koons believes in the philosophy of embrace, establishing a symbiotic relationship between viewers, the artwork, and the spaces they share. Koons is interested in the exchange offered by an artwork and its encounter with the viewer, which he heightens in the illuminating allure of the flawlessly reflective surface of the gazing ball. The mirrored façade of the ball “constantly reminds viewers of their existence, of your existence…It’s visually so abstract that it always made me think of generosity.”i His artistic agenda is characterized by unrelenting optimism, exhorting viewers to accept and embrace his buoyant iconography regardless of socially imposed criteria of good taste. The ebullient aesthetic exchange of Gazing Ball (Demeter) reminds us of the ultimate pleasures in succumbing to our most primal desire for beauty, a flattening of the poles of attraction that exemplifies Koons’s work.
Giorgio de Chirico, The Poet and His Muse, 1921. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Image: The Philadelphia Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome i Jeff Koons, quoted in Jeff Koons, exh. cat., Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2012, pp. 35-36.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner
Exhibited
New York, Michael Altman Fine Art, In Pursuit of Timeless Quality, April 15 - May 20, 2016, p. 62 (illustrated)
Literature
Jeff Koons and Joachim Pissarro, Jeff Koons - The Gazing Ball or the Eye of Janus, Brussels, 2014, pp. 50, 61 (another example illustrated, p. 51 and on the back cover; detail illustrated, pp. 52-56)
Almine Rech Gallery, Twenty Years 1997-2017, Paris, 2017, p. 91 (another example illustrated, p. 92)
Lot Offered with No Reserve
50
Lot offered with No Reserve
Gazing Ball (Demeter)
plaster and glass
48 3/4 x 34 1/8 x 40 1/2 in. (123.8 x 86.7 x 102.9 cm)
Executed in 2014, this work is an artist's proof aside from an edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof.
Estimate
$400,000 - 600,000 •
Sold for $998,000
Amanda Lo Iacono
Head of Auctions
New York
+1 212 940 1278
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 23 June 2021
1
Cinga Samson
Two piece 1
Estimate $25,000 - 35,000
Sold for $378,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
Untitled
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $390,600
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3
Salman Toor
Fort Greene
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $478,800
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4
Avery Singer
Untitled
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $4,144,000
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5
Matthew Wong
The Reader
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $2,329,000
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6
Winston Churchill
The Moat, Breccles
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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7
Matthew Wong
Field in a Dream
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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8
Jean Dubuffet
L'homme à la toque
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,571,000
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9
Emily Mae Smith
Waiting Room
Estimate $40,000 - 60,000
Sold for $756,000
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10
Nicole Eisenman
Whatever Guy
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $840,700
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11
Norman Lewis
Abstract City
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,119,000
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12
Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol
Bananas
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,300,000
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13
David Hockney
A Neat Lawn
Estimate $9,500,000 - 10,500,000
Sold for $11,000,000
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14
Vija Celmins
Untitled (Ocean)
Estimate $5,500,000 - 6,500,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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15
Carmen Herrera
Green and Orange
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,200,000
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16
This lot is no longer available.
17
Brice Marden
Elements III
Estimate $3,200,000 - 3,800,000
Sold for $5,233,000
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18
Amoako Boafo
Untitled
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $655,200
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19
Titus Kaphar
Untitled III
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $1,058,500
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20
Amy Sherald
It Made Sense...Mostly In Her Mind
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $3,539,000
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21
Wayne Thiebaud
Winding River
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $9,809,000
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22
Mark Rothko
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,700,000
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23
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Batman
Estimate $1,600,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,800,000
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24
Keith Haring
Untitled (For John Sex)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $899,000
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25
Takashi Murakami
Red Demon and Blue Demon with 48 Arhats
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,080,000
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26
Gerhard Richter
Abstraktes Bild (940-2)
Estimate $4,500,000 - 5,500,000
Sold for $5,112,000
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27
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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28
Willem de Kooning
East Hampton V
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $3,055,000
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29
Amy Sillman
Flower Giver
Estimate $300,000 - 400,000
Sold for $598,500
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30
Alexander Calder
Fourteen Black Leaves
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $2,300,000
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31
This lot is no longer available.
32
Julie Curtiss
Three Widows
Estimate $110,000 - 150,000
Sold for $466,200
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33
Norman Rockwell
My Mother (Soldier with French Woman)
Estimate $350,000 - 500,000
Sold for $504,000
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34
Richard Prince
Nurses Dormitory #3
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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35
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Jessica
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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36
Andy Warhol
Mao
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $3,000,000
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37
Georg Baselitz
Drei Herzen (Three Hearts)
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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38
Carl Andre
36 Copper Square
Estimate $2,500,000 - 3,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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39
Robert Rauschenberg
Untitled (Elemental Sculpture)
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $315,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Musical Chair
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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41
David Hammons
It’s Not Necessary
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $5,475,000
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42
Andy Warhol
Shadow (Double)
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $877,000
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43
Toyin Ojih Odutola
Quality Control
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $340,200
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44
Robert Colescott
Gift of the Sea
Estimate $300,000 - 500,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Dana Schutz
Swiss Family Traveling
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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46
Banksy
Love Is In The Air
Estimate $1,000,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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47
Keith Haring
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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48
Louise Bourgeois
Labyrinthine Tower
Estimate $550,000 - 750,000
Sold for $756,000
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49
Paul McCarthy
White Snow Dwarf (Doc)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $403,200
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50No Reserve
Jeff Koons
Gazing Ball (Demeter)
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000 •
Sold for $998,000
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