Woman in Tub

Description

Woman in Tub, based on a postcard, depicts a female nude acting out a crude sexual joke in the bathtub. Jeff Koons explained: “There’s a snorkel and somebody is doing something to her under the water because she’s grabbing her breasts for protection. But the viewer also wants to victimize her.” The cartoonlike rendering of the form belies the exquisite hard-paste porcelain finish, typical of 18th-century Rococo figurines. Part of his Banality series, which is characterized by oddly eroticized, comic, and kitsch images, this work demonstrates Duchampian and Pop Art strategies of appropriation and, combining imagery from multiple sources, makes the primary subject taste itself.

Woman in Tub

Jeff Koons

1988

Accession Number

186545

Medium

Porcelain

Dimensions

60.3 × 91.4 × 68.6 cm (23 3/4 × 36 × 27 in.)

Classification

sculpture

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Collection of Stefan T. Edlis and H. Gael Neeson, partial and promised gift to the Art Institute of Chicago