It's Venus as a toy: Jeff Koons is at it again
The former enfant terrible of New York's art scene seems to like orange and overseas attention
Ok kids, ready for our little that-time-we-met-Jeff-Koons story? No? Here goes: They we were, on some golf course (it happens) and he was wearing purple velvet shoes. So I sez to Koons, Prince called, he wants his shoes back.
The former quasi-porn purveyor who wants very desperately, it seems, to not want to approach his 80s being thought of as a relic from the ‘80s was not amused, and seemingly couldn’t remember where he got those shoes.
Which is neat, because can anybody remember when they thought of Jeff Koons as a serious artist? Koons gained notoriety in the late ‘80s largely for displaying pictures of his schlong in various states of activity alongside (or inside) his onetime muse, the wily former Italian politician known as La Cicciolina.
In other words, Koons Kardashianated his way to fame long before Kim did it her way, with a sex tape amply greased by the toxic sludge that is the Los Angeles celebrity manufacturing industry.
Speaking of manufacturing, the issue that many take with Koons’ artwork is that it is not so much art as product. Does he make all those shiny metallic objets d’what himself? Obviously no or not all of the time.
What would, say, Andy Warhol make of that? We asked someone who worked with him: the former West Coast editor of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine and doyenne of the American contemporary art scene Joan Quinn.
“I prefer art that shows the artist’s hand,” the Beverly Hills-based Quinn tells us. “When you work with a workshop full of people, obviously there is no artist involved. So do we call that art? Or an idea that someone else executes?”
“Andy also had others making his silk screens,” Quinn adds, “but he did take the polaroids though — so he had his hand in the art...”
Is this to say that Jeff Koons is an imposter? Of course not. More of an opportunist, in the classic American sense. And moves in some interesting social circles, too.
What has all that got to with anything? Koons apparently took a shine to a Flintstones-era “Venus” figurine found a hundred years ago or so in that other fossil called France, and then made or had made or co-made an oversized shiny coppery metallic sculpture based on this. Which is now the central part of a new exhibit at one of our favorite museums, the Museum of Cycladic Art.
(Was MoMA booked?)
Koons is a figure who trades on his celebrity, and it’s obvious that’s what gets the press in Europe nattering on about him in a way that simply wouldn’t happen stateside, because uh, it’s not 1991 anymore. We’ve sorta moved on.
It’s like when a Taco Bell opens up in Paris (or Athens) — that actually makes the news in Paris or (or Athens). Fast forward a bit and President Trump’s threat to pull the USA out of NATO doesn’t sound so crazy, does it? — what’s the point, really, of clinging to alliances or things of swiftly diminishing relevance in general
We get it: an “artist” like Jeff Koons is also a brand and it is brands, not artists that bring in the bacon, a rather unfortunate dynamic that applies to cultural institutions everywhere, and perhaps more so in America than anywhere else.
Is this the example we want to set, though? If you think so, fine, go clap your hands and form a caring circle for snarky septuagenarian Koons and his overblown orange metal ersatz “Venus” thing.
Just don’t ask him about his shoes.🎨
