‘Primal Gestures’ @ Bastian Gallery
The exhibition at Bastian Gallery through the unusual pairing of artists Jeff Koons and Cy Twombly explores the politics of process and presentation. By juxtaposing Cy Twombly’s mark making and gestural abstraction against Koon’s efforts to annihilate the personal touch of the artist—Primal Gestures celebrates the ability of two seemingly opposing practices to create complex visual languages.
Jeff Koons, Primal Swish, 2008-11, oil on canvas. Installation shot by Carlisle Berkley.
The title Primal Gestures was conceived around Koon’s monumental canvas Primal Swish, from the artist’s Hulk Elvis series. The artist’s painting technique begins with images clipped from advertisements, magazines, and personal photos that he has accumulated and then scanned into a computer; where the images are then arranged, edited, and manipulated using Photoshop. The finished image is projected onto the canvas and each shape is penciled in by hand. Assistants then are given a computer print-out with carefully labeled arrows and numbers telling precisely where each color should go. They meticulously paint the canvas by hand. The dense layers and meticulous painting results in canvases that are bright, sharp, and completely flat. The density of the layering gives the oil paintings a digitally rendered effect. In the Hulk Elvis paintings Koon’s technique [hard-edge photorealism] was at its most mature.
Primal Swish is one of the landscape paintings considered to be the feminine counterpart of the series, included to relieve the tension of the Hulk paintings. The energetic looping brushstrokes upon first glance are expressive and spontaneous, but in fact they are painstakingly created. Where the viewer first perceives one single stroke, there are actually hundreds of small precise brushstrokes. By displacing the expressive act of gestural painting through photography, computer-editing, and deliberate reconstruction Koons is able to retain the objective role he seeks to fulfil in his art.
Cy Twombly, Untitled, 1971. The complete set of six lithographs in colours on buff cream watermarked arches paper.
Cy Twombly was in constant search of a creative language that could express his vision. His practice tested the boundary between poetry and image making resulting in an approach that married the two. In his mark making practice, Twombly explored the material prima of painting, the trace that different materials leave across the surface. In Untitled, 1971—a complete set of six lithographs— the language that the artist evoked was achieved through Twombly’s exploration of an outgrowth of surrealist automatic writing in his art. To read the language that he created, the viewer has to pay close attention to visual signifiers—the presence of colour, smudges, dissolution of form, the trace of graphite across the surface—that touch at an archaic idea. This practice required hand-eye coordination. Each scribble was the result of different strokes, pressure, and gestures. The artist’s hand was very intimately involved in the traces of material that were left behind.
Installation shot of Dom Perignon Balloon Venus and Untitled, 1971 at Primal Gestures.
Paired with Koon’s Primal Swish and Dom Perígnon Balloon Venus, where the artist seeks to devoid his own personal touch in favour of a more objective approach, the first floor of the display in Primal Gestures exhibits a dialogue between concept and material. The two are juxtaposed to mediate on energy, ritual, surfaces, and the passage of time.
Jeff Koons, Dom Perignon Balloon Venus, 2003. polyurethane resin in two parts, with Dom Perginon Rosé Vintage 2003, and maintenance kit contained in the original custom flight case.
Dom Perígnon Balloon Venus, is a collaboration between the artist, Jeff Koons, and Dom Perígnon to create a casing for their 2003 Vintage Rosé. The Balloon Venus is a part of the artist’s Antiquity series, inspired by the Venus of Willendorf. The artist adapted the sculpture for Dom Perignon, scaling it to a smaller version that would split to reveal the vintage bottle. An edition of which one is also on display at the MOCO Museum, Amsterdam—the polyurethane resin sculpture interprets Dom Perígnon as a physical object. The Venus figure represents for the artist life’s continuing energy. In this manifestation the Venus figure is interpreted in branding through the collaboration of the luxury champagne retailer and the artist. Koon’s investigation of the Venus figure—how it relates to human history and ritual—transfers his mediations on continuing energy to the viewer’s perception of Dom Perignon’s Vintage 2003 Rosé. The artist associates the vintage wine with the fertility of the archaic Venus figure. It is a contemporary manifestation that mediates on the past to reference the mystique of Bacchanalian ritual and primal energy to deliver a special experience of art and champagne to the viewer.
The second floor of the display at Bastian Gallery further juxtaposes the practice of the exhibited artists to highlight how each were inspired by history, classical imagery, Greek philosophy, and mythology to bridge the gap between art and life.
Installation Shot of Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Perugino Maddona and Child with Four Saints) at Primal Gestures.
Gazing Ball (Perugino Madonna and Child with Four Saints) is an archival pigment print apart of Koon’s series introducing the large blue baubles popularized by King Ludwig II of Bavaria—now commonly used as garden ornaments— into masterpieces to question the dialogue between artworks and their viewers. In the Gazing Ball series, Koons enters into a conversation started by Duchamp in his L.H.O.O.Q. By introducing the reflective blue glass into reproduced masterpieces, the artist casts the viewer into the transformative, visceral experience of the artwork; so that by seeing themselves in the light of humanism they can find relevance in the past, feel connected to the presence, and feel hope for the future. In Gazing Ball (Rubens Tiger Hunt), also exhibited in Primal Gestures, Koons engages with philosophy, psychology, history, and theology. He highlights the effortless connection between art and human disciplines to celebrate humanism and art as a vehicle for exploration of what it means to be alive.
Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Rubens Tiger Hunt), 2017, archival pigment print on innova rag paper, glass.
With Jasper John’s interpretation of Pygmalion’s ancient dream through paintings of things that overcame the distinction between reality and representation— for example, targets or the American Flag— the new generation of American expressionists embarked to question the philosophical divide between real life and an artist’s interpretation. Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly followed Johns in this practice, for a time working together at Rauschenberg’s studio on Captiva Island, Florida. Untitled (Captiva Island, Florida), 1974, a collage of drawing paper, lined paper, graph paper, tracing paper, wax crayon, transparent tape, and pencil, shows Twombly’s union of text and image to navigate between the physical world and his artistic vision. Twombly looked to archaic ideas and dissolving surfaces to create a conceptual landscape where the viewer can contemplate mythology, language, and philosophy, to take part in the ancient search to define what it is to be human.
Cy Twombly, Untitled (Captiva Island, Florida), 1974, collage drawing paper, lined paper, graph paper, tracing paper, wax crayon, transparent tape, pencil on drawing paper.
Twombly had a profound interest in archaic and classic stages, he developed a deeply aesthetic sense for the eroded, ancient surfaces of time. His nostalgic, sensual polaroid photographs document the artist’s daily life among the fantastical ruins of the Roman Empire and reflect his early inclinations to delve into antiquity to convey something about his reality. Five Greek Poets and a Philosopher, 1978—a complete set of seven lithographs— captures the artists dedication to ancient culture with sharp gestural capital letters recording the names of Latin poets and Greek philosophers. His classic reference creates a sensuous image, one where form dissolves and its distillate nature leaves the viewer grasping to hypothesise as to its meaning. The sensuous quality of Twombly’s dissolved forms is juxtaposed against the hedonism of his sharp gestures. Through this juxtaposition, Twombly uses the history and mythology of the Mediterranean to create a transcendent visual language.
Cy Twombly, Five Greek Poets and a Philosopher, 1978, complete set of seven lithographs with embossment on Richard de Bas mould-made paper.
Through his sculpture edition Diamond (Red). Jeff Koons re-imagines the iconography of a diamond. The Greeks believed that diamonds were the tears of the gods, and the philosopher Plato suggested that the were living celestial spirits embodied in stone. In Roman literature, Cupid’s arrows were described as tipped by diamonds. Displayed accompanying Cy Twombly’s Five Greek Poets and a Philosopher, Primal Gestures pairs the set of lithographs and the chromatic coated porcelain sculpture to create a conversation about permanence, classic symbols, and visual language. The sculpture’s perfect surface and red hue compares synthetic machine-made quality to one of the most rare and expensive diamond colours in the world. Its materiality questions the sincerity of gestures. It takes billions of years to form a diamond, their permanence gives them a special symbolic quality. Koons places the diamond in a contemporary context where it has become a cliché and a signifier of wealth. His narration celebrates a form of nature and a classic symbol of love that has been rooted in history. It explores modern commercial indications as products of history and our cultural DNA.
Installation shot of Jeff Koons, Red Diamond at Primal Gestures.
Overall, the show at Bastian Gallery successfully brings together two giants of post-war art in an unusual but compelling pairing. By encouraging the viewer to decipher the politics of process and presentation, Primal Gestures finds merit in both hyperreal reproduction and expressive gesture. Cy Twombly’s commitment to exploring language through gestural expression and mining archaic ideas—while his contemporaries were beginning to explore more contemporary Pop imagery— redefined American gestural practices within the scope of dense European history to develop complex symbolic allusions. Koon’s mechanical approach, meanwhile, allows him to achieve a more objective role in mediating art history to viewers, aiming to help them to feel their potential as human beings.
Carlisle Berkeley
Contributing Writer, MADE IN BED