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Art and Advertising
Koons’s series Made in Heaven (1989; fig. 30), which serves ostensibly as a testament to Koons’s sexual relationship with his (now ex-)wife – Italian porn star and politician la Cicciolina (Ilona Staller) – is also obviously connected to the realm of advertising. These are painted works that emulate billboards and again show Koons performing for the camera/viewer. This is most evident in the piece that actually became a billboard poster, MADE IN HEAVEN, which is constructed to look like a soft-porn movie advertisement, ‘Starring Jeff Koons and Cicciolina’. Tellingly, this image shows Koons not fully engaging in the act but looking out, making eye contact with the viewer while la Cicciolina swoons in ecstasy, caught inside the internal dynamics of the representation. As with the Art in America advertisement that showed Koons with the two glamour models, there seems to be a play here on the use of sex in advertising, a crude mimicry of traditional sexual ploys that both
30. Jeff Koons, MADE IN HEAVEN – Starring Jeff Koons & Cicciolina (1989). Lithographed billboard, 125 x 272 in (318 x 691 cm). Courtesy: Sonnabend Gallery, New York.