Jeff Koons: Art and Celebrity excerpts (2003)
Jeff Koons: 1 | 2
Jeff Koons has dressed in a succession of different outfits and so he did not adopt a uniform comparable to those of Joseph Beuys and Gilbert & George. Nevertheless, D.S. Baker found his appearance significant: “he is a devilishly handsome white stockbroker-playboy... a confident bourgeois entrepreneur... well-spoken, good looking sex symbol media superstar”. [2] David Bowie, who interviewed him for Modern Painters in 1998, considered Jeff Koons “a great American artist” but also found him “goofy” and his work “disturbingly dysfunctional”. [3]
The commercial gallery and public museum system eagerly embraced Koons’ cute, Disney-style art but his use of popular icons and kitsch objects enabled it to appeal to an audience beyond the art world. His most popular work thus far is probably Puppy (1992), a gigantic West Highland terrier made from earth and thousands of flowers attached to a wood and steel frame, that has been exhibited in public places in Australia, Europe and the United States. It attracted crowds wherever it was displayed.
What differentiates Koons’ work from that of most pop artists of the 1960s is that Koons’ enthusiasm for kitsch and banality was sincere; there was no trace of distance, irony or critique. Like Gilbert & George, Koons wanted an “Art for All” and realised he needed to harness the communicative power of the mass media and, if possible, be as entertaining as Madonna and Michael Jackson. Pop music stars normally provide a succession of albums and concerts based on different themes. Koons followed suit by creating bodies of work for his various exhibitions that had a certain degree of shock value and were easily digested by journalists. Initially, he funded his work from his earnings from selling. [...]
A notorious body of work entitled Made in Heaven (1989-91) consisted of a series of photographs, a billboard poster, lithographs and wood and glass sculptures showing Koons having sexual relations with Ilona Staller. During the late 1980s, Koons had developed a crush on Staller, a Hungarian-born, hard-core porn actress known in Italy as “La Cicciolina” (variously translated as “cuddles”, “little dumpling”, “little tasty morsel” and “little pinchable one”). Besides porn, she was famous in Europe for being elected to the Italian Parliament for the period 1987 to 1992 as a member of the Radical Party. Koons courted Staller and the marriage “made in heaven”—because it joined stars from two different fields—took place in Budapest in 1991. A year later, the couple had a son they named Ludwig Maximillian. However, the marriage did not last and they are now divorced. [...]
Made in Heaven exhibitions were held in Cologne, London, New York and Venice. Since such explicit depictions of sex had not been visible in art galleries before, they generated immense publicity. Koons denied the works were pornographic because he and Ilona were lovers not porn actors. He also claimed that they “promoted narcissism, showing the public what it feels like to be star”.
Many pundits regard Koons as an art world superstar if not its leader but doubts have also been expressed about the quality of his “lowest-common-denominator-mass-franchise art”. He has been accused of dumbing down serious culture, of selling out to commercialism, and of encouraging adults to regress to an infantile state. [...]
References:
[2] D.S. Baker. (February 1993). “Jeff Koons and the paradox of a superstar’s phenomenon.” Bad subjects, no. 4.
[3] David Bowie. (Spring 1998). “Super-Banalism and the innocent salesman.” Modern Painters, 11(1), pp/ 27-34 & cover.
Jeff Koons: 1 | 2
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