"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
What a load of nauseating self-serving wank.
...key to understanding not just Koons, but the transformative power of the art object in our modern world.
This is the pretense, isn't it? This is the heart of the pathetic narrative. This is where the emperor's old and smelly clothes are hung while he displays his flaccid tackle to the uncritical crowd.
I've seen Koons' stuff. I've seen Bubbles and Wolfman. It's not bad. It makes you think. For a few minutes. Not more.
"Transformative power"? Really?? Oh please.
I mean please, fuck off and get a fucking grip. And stop eyeballing the eye-watering wads of cash. It's not just vulgar but downright embarrassing.
Koons is an entertainer. He has his highs and lows.
On a scale from Sooty and Sweep to Tommy Cooper he is somewhere around Jimmy Tarbuck. From Terry Wogan's Floral Dance to Nessum Dorma, he sits alongside Madonna. Ronald McDonald to the Left and Escoffier to the Right, Koons is ByronBurgering somewhere in the middle. Just Eat. He's ahead of Mills & Boone but leagues behind Cortazar.
He's a sassy sales guy. He's Warhol on speed. He is fun. He is noisy. He is not durable or profound. He has done well. Played the game well. Good luck. He's Freddy Starr, but hopefully with a happier ending.
Go and look at the sunset. Or get up at 5am and watch the dawn in your local park. Get on the roof of your house somehow. Wash your feet in a fountain. Get laughed at. Just once, order the most expensive dish in a restaurant.
Save yourself $70 million.
Koons is the kind of oddball that only the US could produce. None of his work really "stays with you" for more than a moment or two of interest, which usually concerns the (commissioned) craftsmanship. There's something distinctly unpleasant about much of his stuff.
Carlos, would you call the work meretricious?
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.
You love it.
Bubbles is quite spectacular. Whoever made it did a decent job.
I saw an exhibition of Jeff koons porn photographs at the tate which was fine but rubbish. However, despite the person warning people at the entrance, several middle class families were taking their quite young children in. Which felt wrong.
Agree. They should get rid of those interfering busybodies.
$ 70 million Zimbabwe would be about a million times more than what it's worth.
And whichever idiot paid $ 90 million for it deserves to have been parted from their money.
<<Koons is the kind of oddball that only the US could produce.>>
I met one from Winnipeg once.
<<Koons is the kind of oddball that only the US could produce.>>
I find comments like this somewhat pathetic, to be frank.
The nature of oddballs is that they are not representative. It also implies that the person making the claim has been everywhere else and has ascertained that the conditions necessary to produce a Koons do not pertain. Which itself implies that those conditions and the process are understood in some detail.
It's wank, in other words.
I appreciate that. let me note, however, that I don't really think the poster in question spoke at all with malice, and I tried to be a bit light in my response as well.
Why does the fable of "The Emperor's New Clothes" spring to mind?
I went to see an exhibition of some of Koons' photographic work at the tate.
A couple were taking their ten year old daughter into the room.
The custodian warned them about the adult content. Which if you know the photographs I'm talking about you will understand.
They felt it was fine.
That's my Jeff Koons story.
oddball
I'd be pleased with that description.
"The Emperor's New Clothes"
Naked attraction for some? This is an Emperor without a stitch on afaic.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/centra
l-sydney/art-gallery-of-nsw-presents-john-olsen-retrospective/news-story/525fa60bf7ad051c7be404a02f7c214f
I see now that I told this story just a few post, but almost two years, previously. Bloody threads back from the deads.