Jeff Koons

Max Hetzler, Berlin
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 2000

Bregenz, Kunsthaus, Jeff Koons, 2001
Hamburg, Kunsthalle; Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Heisskalt,  2003-04
Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Pop-Life, 2010

Exhibition Catalogue, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale,Jeff Koons, 2003, p. 111, illustration in colour of another example in dark green
Hans Werner Holzwarth, Ed., Jeff Koons, Cologne 2008, p. 470, illustration in colour of another example in dark green

The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is gold and the illustration fails to convey fully the reflective quality of the mirrored surface. This work is in very good condition.
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"You know, all of life is...just about being able to find amazement in things. I think it's easy for people to feel connected to that situation of not tiring of looking at something over and over again, and not feeling any sense of boredom, but feeling interest. Life is amazing, and visual experience is amazing"

The artist interviewed by David Sylvester cited in: Interviews with American Artists, London 2002, p. 334

Emanating a golden glow through its highly-polished reflective surface, Jeff Koon's Bear (Gold) is a central exponent of his remarkable Easyfun series of 1999-2000. The supremely shiny gold shape is defined by the silhouette of a highly schematised, cartoon-like bear, acting as a mnemonic signifier of twentieth-century popular culture. The character evoked is the friendly, cuddly teddy bear in the mould of A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, MGM's Barney Bear, Yogi Bear or Baloo from Disney's The Jungle Book. This character typology fits exactly with the specifically American source material for much of the works of theEasyfun series: from Trix breakfast cereal and its mascot rabbit to maraschino cherries, corn niblets, and chocolate chip cookies.Bear (Gold) is further archetypal of the wider themes of Koons' career concerned with the transformation of the seemingly quotidian into the overtly spectacular; the manipulation of unexpectedly lavish materials; the fusing of high and low culture; and the satirical commoditization of art. In these respects the present work is inimitably the product of Jeff Koons' extraordinary imagination and most definitely belongs at the heart of his fantastic output.

Containing no internal descriptive information,Bear (Gold) functions both as a golden monochrome and a mirror to the world of the viewer, inserting our transient realm of experience into the artwork as described by Katy Siegel: "When we look into the animal-shaped mirrors, we see ourselves and the rest of the world passing by their flat surfaces" (Katy Siegel in: Hans Werner Holzwarth, Ed.,Jeff Koons, Cologne 2009, p. 436). By constructing a perceived reality through layers of variously glimpsed reflections, Bear (Gold) also parallels the Easyfun paintings in which snippets of astonishingly eclectic imagery are forged together to create spellbinding canvases filled with terrific contrasts of associative content. In both those paintings and the present work the artist, as master illusionist, playfully alludes to the desires and memories of childhood on a distinctly adult scale. Playing with the role of reflection,Bear (Gold) also parallels his works that enlist a 'cut-out' element, the inspiration for which has been described by the artist: "There was an image I saw, which was of a cutout. Like if you go to an amusement park or a fair, there might be a board that's painted – maybe it's an astronaut – and you put your head through a cutout in the plywood, and then you're the astronaut" (the artist interviewed by David Sylvester in: Exhibition Catalogue, Berlin, Deutsche Guggenheim, Easyfun-Ethereal, 2000-01, p. 14). By being reflected in the golden shape of the fictionalised bear, we inhabit its space and in this way become the cartoon-like character itself, fulfilling the artist's ambition of creating an indeterminate and fantastical dreamworld.