JEFF KOONS - KING OF POP

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s opened mid-career retrospective of Jeff Koons (till Oct 19) and it has been a true landmark exhibition. Whitney filled the entire museum with this show. It is the biggest show dedicated to a single artist that the Whitney has ever done. Organized in chronological order major series, the show presents Koons wonderland of  twists on classical imagery and an explosion of pop references.

While touring the exhibition what hit me the most was duality of opinions on his works. People either love him or hate him. Initially I thought easy art for the many. Could I be more wrong? Not everyone appreciates big over scale shiny toys or porno/romantic photos of wonderland. Having this opportunity I look into Koons’ commercial phenomenon. It made me wonder : is it true Art or toys for billionaires ? is there any irony behind his work? Moreover is there any content behind this hideous kitsch?

Let’s see....

Jeff Koons is widely regarded as one of the most important, influential, popular, and controversial artists of the postwar era. Throughout his career, he has pioneered new approaches to the readymade, tested the boundaries between advanced art and mass culture, challenged the limits of industrial fabrication, and transformed the relationship of artists to the cult of celebrity and the global market. 

He is the most successful American artist after Warhol since the most expensive one or the other way around(!). Koons’s Balloon Dog (Orange) was sold at Christie's  in New York City for $58.4 million and became the most expensive work by a living artist.

Is it Art or candy without a content ?

Critics are strongly divided in their views of Koons. Some see his work as pioneering rule breaker, others dismiss his work as hideous kitsch. He has a habit of splitting critical reactions right down the middle: You love him or you hate him.

Here is what they say :

Blake Gopnik: I think he profoundly misreads all the codes of the culture. I think he’s properly fucked up in the way great artists are. Imagine someone who can’t tell the difference between porn and romance?….Scott Rothkopf, the [Whitney] curator, points how completely messed up it is to imagine [a Koons] in a millionaire’s tasteful living room: A Mies van der Rohe sofa, a Breuer table, and Michael and Bubbles . . . It’s an amazing act of pollution.

Christian Viveros-Fauné: 'This is stainless steel cast hot air, baubles for the period we’re living in. There is no judgment in these works. This is just ugly kitsch of the positional variety . . . perfect examples of . . . almost Rococo vapidity'.

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'With his equilibrium tanks, miraculous constructions in which basketballs float in minutely calibrated salt water, and his uncanny stainless steel sculptures of a toy rabbit or an ice bucket, he became one of the most noted artists of the decade – helped along by frequent appearances in the mass media, in which he would offer up vapid bons mots about "presence" and "self-confidence". His mystifying persona is perhaps his most enduring artwork, and he irritates most when he insists he has no desire to irritate. He is unfailingly polite, endlessly good-natured. In a cynical, ironic art world he comes across as a suburban-mall Father Christmas'.- says Jason Farago from the Guardian.

Koons states : 'All that matters in life and in art is human interaction' He says there are no hidden meanings in his works.

Take a closer look at Jeff Koons' Retrospective. 

NOW, WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ? ART OR EASY FUN ?


READING:
www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/07/jeff-koons-whitney-retropective#
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/so-what-is-it-about-jeff-koons-that-has-so-captured-art-worlds-imagination-as-balloon-dog-sells-for-record-58m-8943284.html
www.vulture.com/2014/06/jeff-koons-creator-and-destroyer-of-worlds.html
www.architecturaldigest.com/blogs/daily/2014/07/jeff-koons-times-square

LINKS: 
www.jeffkoons.com/
whitney.org/

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