BANALITY
"In Banality, I was trying to tell people to have a sense of security in their own past, to embrace their own past. This was the most direct way that I started to speak about people not letting art be a segregator".
Before beginning the Banality series, he visited several European workshops specialized in religious woodcarvings and decorative porcelain figurines. Koons commissioned them to produce a series of sculptures of iconic images in contemporary society, such as Michael Jackson with his chimp Bubbles—whose pyramidal composition echoes that of Michelangelo´s Pietà—and others referenced from commercial postcards, objects in airport giftshops or reminiscent of religious imagery. These works, which the critics described as overly saccharine, once again managed to harmoniously mesh contrasting readymade elements: eroticism and innocence, contemporary pop culture and elitist baroque culture.