Schizophrenic Culture Remix – Jeff Koons’ Triple Elvis
Jeff Koons’ Triple Elvis is a large (102 x 138 inches), finely detailed oil painting currently on display at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum in Los Angeles. One assumes from the title that the piece is Koons’ contemporary take on Andy Warhol’s Triple Elvis of 1963. Koons’ work, however, diverges quite dramatically from Warhol’s famous triple screen-printing of Elvis. Rather than a two-toned work with the same image repeated, Koons’ Triple Elvis is gaudily chromatic with a schizophrenic layering of appropriated imagery, including some from his own body of work. While the level of craftsmanship and detail employed in the piece is quite stunning, ultimately the work is a visual vomit of everyday imagery from western society; ugly and difficult to view. And this might just be Koons’ point.
The painting is a layered composition of imagery, with a background composed from a horizontally and vertically mirrored reproduction from a comic strip. Two areas appear upside down and two appear right-side up. The comic strip, or cartoon, is unfamiliar and becomes a patterned backdrop to the figures in the foreground of the painting. The middle ground of the work reflects the subject matter of the piece’s presumed inspiration, Warhol’s Triple Elvis. Three seductive poses of a semi-nude woman are placed along the horizontal center of the painting. Whether these images are appropriated from an outside source, or if the subject posed specifically for the piece is unclear. The top layer of the painting appropriates one of Koon’s own sculptures; a large inflatable lobster. The lobster is placed horizontally across the center of the image, effectively “censoring” the exposed breasts of the woman.
Koons’ Triple Elvis seems to be a rumination on our era’s schizophrenic proliferation of media. One could argue that we are constantly bombarded with an endless stream of media overwhelming our senses. Finding solace from the visual and audible cacophony is becoming ever more difficult in our civilized environments. In Koons’ Triple Elvis we see a visual representation of this cacophony. It’s gaudy, loud, ugly and overwhelming visually. The imagery used is common, and in this piece, verges on pornographic. While Warhol’s Triple Elvis employed one posed image of a popular entertainer to reflect on popular culture; Koons’ work uses highly contrasting, layered imagery plundered from our everyday culture. Though an eye sore visually, the point of view of the piece is evident and successful overall.