In a 1987 interview with a group of art critics, Koons referred to the work that was sold last month, calling it “the ‘Jim Beam’ work.” Koons had exhibited this piece – an oversize, stainless steel toy train filled with bourbon – in an exhibition called “Luxury and Degradation,” that, according to the New York Times, examined “shallowness, excess and the dangers of luxury in the high-flying 1980s.”