Jeff Koons

In Jeff Koons's One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (1985), a Spalding basketball floatsin the center of a glass tank that stands on a four-legged black metal structure. It has been calledone of the defining works of the 1980s--but also described (by such critics as Craig Owens, RosalindKrauss, and Hal Foster) as "an endgame," "misleading," and"repulsive." The work presents what the artist called "the ultimate state ofbeing"--neither death nor life but the absence of change. It captured a spirit of the time,characterized by commodification, seduction, and political inactivity. Its stillness embodied theopposite of social revolution. But the "total equilibrium" of the work is actuallytemporary. For purely physical reasons, the equilibrium is lost every six months and must be reset.In this extended essay on Koons's famous work, Michael Archer puts One Ball Total Equilibrium Tankin an art historical framework, describing its initial exhibition at International With Monument inNew York and related issues of media, commercialism, and class. He discusses the wider context ofthe 1980s art world, in which a renewed attention to painting practices met the legacy of Pop andappropriation art--setting the stage for the negative critical reception Koons's artwork firstreceived. Archer goes on to consider sport as celebrity-maker and industry; the physical science ofequilibrium; and the implications of the fact that the equilibrium of One Ball Total EquilibriumTank is indeed total--but temporary.

Michael Archer is an art critic and Reader in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London. The author of Art Since 1960, he has published essays on contemporary art in Artforum, Parkett, Art Monthly, and other journals.