"In the Pre-New I was manipulating objects. I was not maintaining the objects’ integrity. I would glue a teapot to plastic tubes or put a bolt through the back of a coffee percolator. What was important in this work is that it liberated me from my own subjective sexuality. I was taking my work into the realm of the objective. I was distancing myself from my own sexuality".
Jeff Koons grew up in the golden age of American capitalism, exemplified by the proliferation of consumer goods and, above all, the household appliances found in nearly every home. Advertisements in the 1950s highlighted consumer goods that allowed the American public to dream of an easier domestic life. Koons deliberately chose to work with these small appliances, some of which had already begun to enter the Architecture and Design Department of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, where the artist was working at the time. In order to construct these three-dimensional still lifes, Koons altered the integrity of the devices and turned them into artifacts (arte factum) by attaching them to fluorescent tubes. These pieces allude to the work of Dan Flavin and to storefront windows, where such devices become objects of desire.
