Jeff Koons Sculpture At 30 Rock

This past weekend I was watching the Today Show and noticed something unusual.  In the background where the Christmas Tree is usually placed there was something big on display, but not a clue what it could be.  Decided to do some search work on the internet and found the following:

There is the giant retrospective that opens at the Whitney Museum of American Art on June 27. Timed to that will be the appearance of “Split-Rocker,” his monumental, flowering, toy like sculpture. It is beginning to take shape at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, on the spot where the Christmas tree stands every year.

“We couldn’t do any topiary at the Whitney, because there wasn’t any space,” Mr. Koons said.

It’s not his first appearance at Rockefeller Center. Fourteen years ago, his 43-foot-tall “Puppy,” festooned with 70,000 flowering plants, stood in the same place and was one of the most popular artworks ever shown there, according to Nicholas Baume, director of the nonprofit Public Art Fund. The fund presents art around the city, in this case in collaboration with Tishman Speyer.

Weighing 150 tons and soaring over 37 feet high, “Split-Rocker” is composed of two halves: one based on a toy pony of one of Mr. Koons’s sons, the other based on a toy dinosaur. Together, they form the head of a giant child’s rocker. Like “Puppy,” it will be covered with over 50,000 live flowers, in this case petunias, begonias, impatiens, geraniums and marigolds, to name a few.

Mr. Koons produced just two editions of the sculpture. He owns the one being installed in Rockefeller Center; the other is in the collection of Glenstone, the private museum in Potomac, Md., owned by Mitchell P. Rales, the industrialist, and his wife, Emily. “Split-Rocker” has been on view there for nearly a year.

Larry Gagosian, the New York dealer who represents Mr. Koons and is paying for the Rockefeller Center installation, said “Split-Rocker” is “very Duchampian,” adding, “It’s really a ready-made.” Conceived in 2000, the sculpture has been shown three times before, but only in Europe.  It was first exhibited at Palais des Papes, Avignon in 2000; and subsequently at Château de Versailles (2008) and Fondation Beyeler (2012). It is also in the collection, as noted above, of the Glenstone private museum in Potomac, Maryland, where it has been on view since June of 2013.  “Split-Rocker” will be at Rockefeller Center through Sept. 12.  Below is a photo taken when it was on display in Switzerland. 

Consistent with Koons's persistent fascination with dichotomy and the in-between, the inspiration for Split-Rocker came when he decided to split and combine two similar but different toy rockers, a pony belonging to his son and a dinosaur (“Dino”). The slippage or "split" between the different halves of the heads gives an almost Cubist aspect to the composition. As the model was enlarged to the scale of a small house, the split became an opening, a profile, and a light shaft. In contrast to his legendary Puppy of 1992, which was presented by Public Art Fund at Rockefeller Center in the summer of 2000, Split-Rocker suggests the idea of a fantasy shelter. Whereas the singular form of Puppy is closed and sculptural, the combined form of Split-Rocker is architectural and hollow.

 

My thanks to the NYTimes and the 30 Rockefeller website for this information.