Today Artforum’s Lloyd Wise mentioned a project Jeff Koons did for the magazine in November 1987. Titled Baptism, the seven-page spread ran a year before his Art Magazine Ads series in the same magazine, which promoted his unprecedented, three-venue Banality show. Unlike the Ads, though, which were released as a print portfolio, Baptism seems to have been its own, standalone thing.
Anyway, as one of the sites, George Washington’s restaged pew at St. Paul’s Church on Broadway [right], has since become an object of fascination here, I thought I’d look up the rest.
I haven’t gotten very far because I was surprised by this first object, a porcelain figurine of Don Quixote by Enzo Arzenton for the Italian manufacturer Capodimonte. Actually what surprised me was the image, which is the same one found on the website of this Staten Island Capodimonte importer almost forty years later.
Koons appropriated this image from some catalogue, brochure, or ad, and it’s still in circulation. I don’t know why that seems wild to me.