ONE SMALL SEED MAGAZINE Issue #27 Digital 02 | Page 26

Even though the amalgamation of art and pop could alienate certain
audiences — not everyone who listens to pop music has heard of Jeff Koons! —
Gaga endeavoured to show how trans-genre links could transcend the rigidity
of fixed boundaries. Enter Koons…
The big, blue ball, which forms the centre-piece for Koons’ Gazing Ball collection,
as well as the ARTPOP album cover, is significant in his work because it comes
from the desire to both reflect and lure the viewer into a transcendental world…
‘The gazing ball really does become kind of the symbol for everything’ (Koons).
Transcendence as a theme is visually further explored on the face of ARTPOP
by the inclusion of the Renaissance artists’ Apollo and Daphne statute by Gian
Lorenzo Bernini (1622-25) and Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1486). The allusion
that Koons makes between Gaga and Apollo (the god of music) is explained
by Koons: ‘Whenever Apollo would perform music he would transcend… And
that’s the transcendence that you can experience through art and life’.

“THE GAZING BALL REALLY
DOES BECOME KIND
OF THE SYMBOL FOR
EVERYTHING”.