NEW YORK - Dazzling, magnificent, gigantically grotesque and staggeringly beautiful, Jeff Koons’s Blue Diamond, 2005 will be the spectacular centerpiece of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale on November 13 in New York. Part of the famed Celebration series, Blue Diamond – a sculpture that occupies not only a seminal place in Koons’s body of work but also in his personal life – will present collectors with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire an oeuvre clef by one of the most important artists of our time.

Blue Diamond is part of Jeff Koons’s Celebration series which the artist commenced in 1994 and which focuses on the calendar of holidays. Koons’s works in the series are reflections upon the mass-made consumer products that are created for celebrating these holidays and in that sense Blue Diamond is the perfect, Disney-scaled engagement ring. Its vast, oversized, gleaming stainless steel format takes ‘bling-bling’ to ecstatic new levels but the sparkle is only skin deep. The highly polished chromium surface of this steel object reflects light, but does not refract it in the same way as a real diamond. Instead, this is what an imaginary blue diamond should be—it is an almost comic-strip archetype, a stereotype, a clichй that has burst into monumental existence in our world, speaking of wealth and luxury and awe in an open, sincere and deliberately uncritical manner.

Blue Diamond – as the above-cited Koons quote makes clear in no uncertain terms – is also about sex, a theme which has been glorified throughout his work. Sex for Koons, is not a ‘by-the-way,’ sex is what ultimately assures procreation, hence life and thus primordial. In Koons’s own words: “Sexuality is the principal object of art. It’s about the preservation of the species. Procreation is a priority. But this also has a spiritual aspect for me. It’s about the way that we have children.” 

Blue Diamond is part of a group of five works – the red, pink and green versions are in private collections. A yellow version is being produced and will round off the series.


Auction: Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale - November 13 at 7 p.m. Viewing: Christie’s Galleries at Rockefeller Center: November 9 – 13.

“It's a group based on the calendar of holidays: vacations, birthdays, Valentine's Day, Easter. The diamond is seven feet wide. The stone is attached to a ring by four prongs. For me, the prongs are like sperm attacking an ovum. The facets of the diamond are the egg in the process of being fertilized.” Jeff Koons discussing the Diamond’s group.