Closing day Event. Jeff Koons: ‘Venus’ Lespugue

The Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, is pleased to present Jeff Koons: ‘Venus’ Lespugue, marking the first public display of Balloon Venus Lespugue (Orange) (2013-2019) by Jeff Koons.

Koons’ Balloon Venus Lespugue (Orange) draws inspiration from the prehistoric Venus of Lespugue, a mammoth tusk ivory figurine that dates back approximately 28,000 years. Jeff Koons has been influenced by this figure since the late 1970s. In his series Antiquity, which he started in 2008, the artist’s interpretation of the Venus of Lespugue engages a variety of art historical reference points, from Botticelli and Titian to Duchamp and Brancusi, where the notions of beauty and form play a central role. Through an intensive, yearslong process, Koons has transposed the fetishized original, renowned for its exaggerated curves, into a towering balloon sculpture of Giacometti-esque proportions.

Next to Koons’ work, the museum presents a series of ten Venus figurine copies from the Upper Paleolithic era, each on loan from museums that house the immovable originals. Among these will be the copy of the Venus of Lespugue from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris, which served as the direct source of inspiration for Koons’ mirror-polished stainless-steel sculpture. The Venus figurines represent one of humanity’s earliest aesthetic codes – a profound abstraction of fertility, survival, and continuity – made into something compact and portable. Koons’ version revisits this prehistoric visual language through a radically different medium and context: the industrial, hyper-material world of the 21st century.