Marble Statue Group of the Three Graces, 2nd century CE. Roman. Marble, 48 1/2 x 39 3/8in. (123 x 100cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Philodoroi, Lila Acheson Wallace, Mary and Michael Jaharis, Annette and Oscar de la Renta, Leon Levy Foundation, The Robert A. and Renée E. Belfer Family Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. John A. Moran, Jeannette and Jonathan Rosen, Malcolm Hewitt Wiener Foundation and Nicholas S. Zoullas Gifts, 2010 (2010.260)
I want my life as vast as their perception of what life could be.
My name’s Jeff Koons. I’m an artist.
I love the antique Roman time period where people are creating things that compete with nature. They’re really above Man himself.
In the Roman Court you have the eternal both through the biological and through ideas. A lot of these pieces are copies, and you can feel the dedication that the Romans had to try to preserve all of the power within the original Greek pieces from third century BC. But at the same time you always have the desire for a new form, a new material realization.
Through senses you develop ideas, and so you go from the richness of biology to abstraction of just pure ideas, and everything can be done just with the movement of the flesh, or a detail of the eye, the length of a toe, or the shaping of a breast, the way the hair is moving. All of the different characteristics, from one statue to another, everything is informing you who they are, whether it’s Hercules or whether it’s Aphrodite. All of this information is placed within a work of art.
I mean, I think desire, beauty, are very important within art to make the body so sensual. These little details can be so awakening. The bodies are vehicles to have a dialogue about life, about fertility, about procreation. When I look at The Three Graces, I don’t necessarily feel desire, I don’t feel that I want to dominate something, and I think that’s maybe because there are three of them, and that it is more about your place within the community.
The Roman Court represents, to me, the most vital information important to us as human beings to live our lives to the fullest. And the human becomes larger than life. Those gods, they’re embodying big ideas and you can feel within your own body what it’s like to be Hercules. I just love the drive and the fantasy to be everything that we can be as individuals, as a society. It’s so stimulating and enlarging the parameters of what our lives can be. I want my life as vast as their perception of what life could be.
