September 11, 2008

Jeff Koons took his doggie to Versailles.
posted by Capt. Renault 15 years ago
  • Well, I like it.
  • Koons is not an artist. He's a hack, and a spectacular one. He's part of the degradation of modern art. He basically has an idea for something and pays a bunch of other workers to fabricate it for him. This is not art. It is shit.
  • He basically has an idea for something and pays a bunch of other workers to fabricate it for him. Like Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo, and just about every other Great Artist from the distant past. I'm not comparing this Koons character to them. I've never heard of this guy before, and still have no opinion of him now that I have heard of him and seen his work. Just expressing a peeve I have about Great Artists from the distant past.
  • No, no, no, no. There is no comparison. Those artists *did* in fact come into contact with their work, in most cases doing most of the actual composition if not the majority of the painting itself. Koons is a hack, he doesn't do anything to the work, he doesn't even get his hands dirty. By this logic a guy who hires a contractor to build his house is an architect.
  • I might be going to this next month as part of a work-related thing. I've been to Versailles once before: I found the palace disappointing but the grounds and surrounding parklands were stunning.
  • I found the palace disappointing but the grounds and surrounding parklands were stunning. I found it hard to get a grasp on the palace itself -- the scale was too immense, and there were too many tourists to fight off. And the Hall of Mirrors was closed. But the grounds, yes! I lucked into a behind-the-scenes tour of the Petit Trianon, which was absolutely mindboggling. The visit to Marie Antoinette's play opera house, especially. I also had the Grand Trianon pretty much to myself. Seeing all that, I wanted to join a revolution, too. But Jeff Koons, symptom of the diseased era, still pretty.
  • I like a lot of modern art but Koons does absolutely nothing for me. He's an interesting sociological study, though. It seems he just started advertising himself as a great artist and people believed him and bought his crap.
  • Jeff Koons is a pathetic donkey turd. Questions about whether he makes the work, to me, are not the point. The "work" is stupid and meaningless to begin with, no matter who makes it. It shouldn't be at Versailles or Disneyland; it should be at the bottom of the ocean.
  • That's an insult to the ocean.
  • Koons is shit. Absolute, unadulterated shit. His 'work' is vapid and banal and in interviews he shows an at best limited understanding of the ideas he claims to base his work around (see the porn stuff he did years ago). This guy could be wiped from the canon of contemporary art and it would not make one bit of difference. I haven't even clicked the link, and I'm not going to. I hate him that much. No offence, cappy. You're still my muse.
  • So you would call Koons, what, "tame and bland"? And no, I don't think much of it as art, but I do think it's purdy. That something looks neat isn't enough, though. But, again, purdy.
  • And speaking of looking purdy, Thirst for Hirst leads to $212M sale.
  • I was discussing this subject with the lovely Mrs. 88, who is herself an artist and art school grad. I asked her if, within the "art world", she saw any pressure to pretend to like stuff that is obvious shit, just because it's avant-garde or 'different' or because it has been embraced by the art establishment (if there even is such a thing). "Absolutely!" she said, and basically confirmed my suspicion that there's a whole "Emperor's New Clothes" dynamic in art where people publicly pretend to like stuff they really don't like but are afraid to admit not getting.
  • I would suggest a corollary to that, that such support is given mutually -- I don't call you stuff out for being shit, and you don't call out mine. To clarify my position on Koons, I'd put him in the category of "it is what it is" art. Nothing profound, no great meaning, but it looks nice. Unobjectionable art has its place too. And in that, Koons has done quite well, and I give him full marks for making something of himself. He's like Robert Bateman, with a modern bent. Not great art, no, but a success of a different kind. IMHO, YMMV, CYLL, etc.
  • I do detect a slight tendency for modern fine art to become more crowd-pleasing. A big purple balloon doggie is sort of an amusing artefact, whether it's art or not. If I was offensively rich, I might put one in one of my gardens. We've had all those rather engaging Gormley figures, from pottery munchkins you could use on your rockery to the much-loved Angel of the North; there were those slide things at the Tate that people queued to go on, and so on. Once upon a time you would have been offered a small pile of bricks or a white canvas painted white. Even Tracey Emin's bed is more interesting to look at than that.
  • Mrs. 88 also told me she was ridiculed at art school for admitting to liking some of the Group of Seven. Apparently anything approaching mass appeal is considered beneath the self-defined art elite.
  • Those Seven chappies look OK to me!
  • Looks like tickets for the evening shows are fifteen Euro twenty, if you want to go, kit.
  • Here is Wally's sculpture.