"Why Jeff Koons’s “Rabbit” Could Sell for up to $70 Million "
"But perhaps the most important work in the show was a three-foot-high stainless steel bunny—a work that’s key to understanding not just Koons, but the transformative power of the art object in our modern world."
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-jeff-koonss-rabbit-sell-70-million
The stainless steel sculpture sold for $91.1 million, surpassing the $90.2 million record set by David Hockney last November
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/jeff-koons-rabbit-breaks-auction-record-most-expensive-work-living-artist-180972219/
Footballers go for double that
Jeff is probably knocking out another couple of dozen right now
would you call the work meretricious?
Goodness me no Uran. Definitely maybe not overly completely much.
But the thing with Koons, and most big name contemporaries, is that (much of) 'the work' itself gets reduced to a minor element in a fawning masturbatory self-referential arms race between nearly-failed columnists, primarily for the benefit of weapons-grade tossers.
It ceases to be about the art itself and is not even about the much-vaunted narrative - which of course has its validity. It is mostly about brokering the reverberations within the echo-chamber.
As Alex Rotter, the chairman of the post-war and contemporary art department at Christie’s, put it, the release of Rabbit in 1986 “would not only shake the art world to its core, but alter the course of popular culture as we now know it.”
Would it? Would it really Alex? So how's that going?
Goodness me no Uran. Definitely maybe not overly completely much.
I can't see why not, but absolutely no matter.
That second sentence is a thing of wonder. Does it maybe mean 'Well maybe slightly.'?
Probably says a lot about me that the only reason i know who Jeff Koons is, is because he married a porn star.
Carlos has it bang on.Coons is arts version of David Blaine.
#9 - Haven't collectors always wanted to have a piece by a particular artist because it's by that artist rather than because of the work itself? I don't see anything in this in principle that a Victorian industrialist or a renaissance prince wouldn't recognise.
If Bromio was still around he'd come rushing in to sing Coons' praise.
more likely to physically attack me for saying that.
Interesting misspelling.
Does it maybe mean 'Well maybe slightly.'?
Yes. But part of what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't do to tar all with the same brush.
I don't consider 'the works' to be universally marvelous, average, or worthless. But the discussion around them is toe-curling.
Macp, isn't his name Koons?
But part of what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't do to tar all with the same brush.
I agree. And I can see ambivalance as between all of his work, and the work which was the starter of this thread, and to which i was referring. So wasn't tarring all.
No, indeed you weren't - Didn't mean to imply such a thing.
And hello to MacP. Yes, would be interesting to get both barrels hear from The Major on this.
uran OMG I can't explain that. I know full well his name is Koons and yet I misspelled it, not once but twice. That is more than embarrassing.
As the I Ching says, 'No blame.'
All appreciation of art is subjective -- some people might think Jeff Koon's weird creatures are pants, other people might consider that Henry Moore's weird reclining figures are underpants.
I do too. I quite like a lot of stuff.