Play-Doh
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One of the largest and most complex sculptures in Koons’ Celebration series, Play-Doh appears to be formed from giant, haphazardly arranged scraps of the famous modelling substance. However, it is actually constructed from twenty-seven interlocking pieces of aluminum. Requiring significant engineering, the sections are held together by gravity alone and in Koons’ search for perfection each piece is painted in its entirety even though only parts are visible to the viewer. For generations of adults, the mere sight of Play-Doh is nostalgic, conjuring the scent and tactile appeal of it. Many of us make our first sculptures out of Play-Doh, so there is a humorous, self-referential element in this work by one of the world’s most famous sculptors, returning to square one. Only here, the Play-Doh has been monumentalised. The mound dwarfs the viewer and serves as a visceral memorial to childhood. This is particularly poignant as Koons states that the work was inspired by his son who, as a toddler, presented his father with a similar mound of Play-Doh, “He was so proud. I looked at it, and I thought this is really what I try to do every day as an artist, to make objects that you can’t make any judgements about. That it’s perfect, that you just experience acceptance.” Clear parallels can be drawn between Play-Doh and the work of Mike Kelley, particularly his pieces that include large assemblages of childhood toys such as More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Wages of Sin (1987) and Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (1991-99). In the latter, Kelley utilizes amorphous spheres of plush toys to satirize the dogma associated with Abstract Expressionism. In many ways, Koons is doing the same thing, this sculpture appears to fall into the expressionist canon, but although it has the appearance of spontaneity, it is actually minutely designed and engineered. Furthermore, it presents the tensions generated by the modern artist who is a designer rather creator. The piece appears to have been shaped by human hands, bearing the imprints of giant fingers, but has actually been created via a fabrication process undertaken by staff without the physical involvement of the artist. The Celebration series focuses on parties, holidays and other similar annual landmarks and in doing so Koons highlights the passage of time. Many of the pieces reference these celebrations through the trappings of childhood and through this Koons draws attention to the cycle of birth, growth, and sex and emphasizes the human drive to procreate. The artist has indirectly referenced this process in Play-Doh, stating that, “If you take Play-Doh apart…they’re organic shapes that all stack on top of each other…so that these surfaces are meeting on the inside and you never see that…the public doesn’t see it but I think that you feel it and it has kind of a Freudian quality to it. I really thought that Play-Doh captures the twentieth century and you have this aspect of Freud with this mound of Play-Doh and the way the organic shapes are on top of each other.” First unveiled at Koons’ 2014 Retrospective Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Play-Doh was the culmination of two decades of planning and execution. From this showing it garnered almost universal admiration, with Roberta Smith describing it in the New York Times as “a new, almost certain masterpiece whose sculptural enlargement of a rainbow pile of radiant chunks captures exactly the matte textures of the real thing, but also evokes paint, dessert and psychedelic poop”.
Polychromed aluminum – Bill Bell Collection
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