| Artist: | Jeff Koons |
|
|---|---|---|
| Title: | Travel Bar | |
| Date: | 1986 | |
| Nationality: | American | |
| Context: | Postmodernism | |
| Movement: | Neo-Pop Art | |
| Materials: | cast stainless steel sculpture | |
| Subject: an upper-class travel bar decanter for liquor cast in stainless steel (the proletariat silver according to Jeff Koons); part of the Luxury and Degradaton show. Liquor is sealed inside, but it is withheld, since to break the seal would be to break apart the work. Playing on status objects empty of soul that suggest an artificial luxury, and artificial value, vanitas imagery. Style: Koons uses the strategy of withholding, sealing the liquor inside where one can't get to it without ruining the work; desire always out of reach as a metaphor for the false promises of advertising and the way even status objects of surplus can't fill the void or lack of missing moral values. Context: vanitas imagery for an age of consumption to excess; the use of status objects as support mechanisms for the individual and signs of class power. The slick, shiny surfaces of the hyperreal, hollow at the core. | ||
