Jeff Koons’ Venus and what we really taste in wine

By Yiannis Karakasis MW

A few days ago, I visited Jeff Koons’ Venus Lespugue at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens. Based on a prehistoric figure dating back almost 27,000 years and discovered in 1922 in a cave of the Lespugue community in the foothills of the Pyrenees, this modern Venus is truly imposing. Yet you cannot really look at it without seeing yourself.

The highly polished surface turns this sculpture into not one mirror but many. I walked around it, came closer, stepped back, and watched my reflection appear, disappear, and return in different forms. The sculpture was the same, but what I saw kept changing. And I wasn't looking only at Venus. I was looking at myself, too.

On the nearby wall was a quote from Koons: “Reflections tell the viewer that nothing ever happens without them. Art happens inside them.”

I kept thinking about those words after I left, and inevitably my thoughts wandered to wine. Please don't ask me why. Wine is just part of my life, and it significantly influences how my mind works.

Wine is real and specific. It has its own dimensions and, dare I say, geometry (I hope I don't sound like Euclid). It comes from a particular place, grape and vintage. It has a structure defined by acidity, tannins and alcohol, as well as aromas and flavours. Many decisions are made before it reaches us, in the vineyard and the winery. These things exist whether we like the wine or not. They belong to the wine itself.

But drinking wine, or better, enjoying it, is different. Enjoyment asks something of us, as we are no longer simply receiving what is in the glass. We are participating in the experience. That happens within us. A kind of intracellular fermentation, if you will forgive the wine analogy within the wine analogy.