Jeff Koons Is Giving Sculpture to Paris to Remember Terror Victims
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Version 0 of 1. PARIS — Inspired by the Statue of Liberty, the American contemporary artist Jeff Koons is donating a monumental sculpture of a fistful of tulips to the City of Paris and the people of France to commemorate victims of the recent terrorist attacks here. One of Mr. Koons’s largest sculptures — 34 feet high, 27 feet wide and 33 feet deep — “Bouquet of Tulips” is meant to echo the hand of the Statue of Liberty, a gift to the United States from France. Currently under construction in Germany, the work, made of bronze, stainless steel and aluminum, will be permanently installed next year in the plaza in front of the Museum of Modern Art and the Palais de Tokyo. “I hope the work is life-changing to people,” Mr. Koons said in an interview here on Monday. “I hope that the ‘Bouquet of Tulips’ can communicate a sense of future, of optimism, the joy of offering, to find something greater outside the self.” Inspired by floral paintings by Fragonard, Picasso and others, he said that he had chosen the tulips for their “buoyancy,” which he hoped would inspire the families of victims of the attacks to carry on. Jane D. Hartley, the United States ambassador to France and Monaco, said she had been thinking of a cultural offering the United States could give France “in a spirit of ‘we’re in this together’” after terrorist attacks last year: ones at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and a kosher supermarket, and then the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people. “My hope is this amazing sculpture will bring visitors to Paris,” Ms. Hartley said at a news conference on Monday announcing the donation. Tourism in Paris has declined dramatically since the attacks. The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, told attendees at the news conference that the sculpture delivered an optimistic message in turbulent times. “We need to tell the youth and the young generation that it’s not true that tomorrow’s world will be worse than it is today,” she said. Ms. Hartley approached Mr. Koons after discussing the idea at a dinner in Paris in January with her friend Jerry I. Speyer, chairman of the board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and a collector of the artist’s work. “I know how much he loves France, and he’s the most prominent American living artist,” Ms. Hartley said in an interview before the news conference. Mr. Koons, best known for his metallic sculptures of balloon animals and other souvenir and everyday objects, is also one of the most polarizing and well-remunerated figures in the contemporary art world. His works have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars, but he waived payment for the sculpture. The 3.5 million euros ($3.8 million) it will cost to produce and install the work are being raised from private donations by a nonprofit foundation, Fonds Pour Paris, and its counterpart in the United States, the Paris Foundation. This is the first commemorative work Mr. Koons, who lives in New York, has created, but he does have a festive work, “Balloon Flower (Red),” on display outside 7 World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Koons’s work has proved controversial in France. When some of it was displayed at Versailles in 2008, part of a program showing contemporary art at that historic site, French art critics questioned “the intrusion within the walls of the chateau of 16 giant glittering sculptures by an artist considered a paragon of kitsch,” Le Monde reported at the time. Six years later, in a review of Mr. Koons’s work at the Pompidou Center in Paris, Le Figaro asked in a headline whether he was an “impostor or a creator?” |