Masters – a new alliance between Louis Vuitton and the artist Jeff Koons blurs the lines between collaboration and homage. Masters remixes the icon artworks of the old masters and presents them in a way that encourages new interpretations.
From life-size, self-starred-in porn to building-sized balloon toys wrought in brass, Jeff Koons has created some of the most notorious and notable works of any living contemporary artist. Reworking saccharine iconography and pop culture obsessions, Koons offers a kaleidoscopic lens on contemporary culture and consumption. Suffice to say, the artist makes for an ideal new collaborator for the luxury house of Louis Vuitton.
Redrawing Vuitton’s iconic bags like the Neverfull and the Keepall, Koons pools imagery from his 2013 series Gazing Ball, for which the artist repainted world-famous works like Manet’s Olympia and Giotto’s Kiss of Judas and planted metallic spheres in front of them. In these mirrored objects, the viewer sees themselves reflected, situated in the painting – forging a playful relationship between these great works and the outside world. “These artists are making reference to other artists, and they find something outside themselves that’s greater than themselves,” Koons explains of his choices of these particular works. “It’s a form of love, and we all practice this every day in our life. If we want to achieve transcendence, we are able to look at even the simplest thing outside ourselves, or the most complex, and find awe and wonderment in that. And our parameters expand.”
Photo courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Text courtesy Another Mag