Reviews
Jeff Koons
Issue 28, December 2008
Château de Versailles, Paris
10 September – 14 December
Review by Christopher Mooney
This latest attempt to transfuse fresh blood into the congested veins of French patrimony is, by Koons's standards, tastefully conceived. Oversize Toys 'R' Us tchotchkes and topiary, but no porn or ironic self-aggrandisement, beyond the marble bust of himself in the Salon d'Apollon, next to the famous Rigaud portrait (actually a studio-assistant copy) of the slim-legged Sun God in white tights.
Still, judging by most responses, perhaps the palace should have been walled off during Koon's three-month show, with discretionary warnings to the sensitive, as was done with Ilona's Asshole (1991) at his Chicago retrospective this summer.
“This is terrible”, says an American tourist next to me, eyes wide with horror at the sight of an 8-foot inflatable beach toy dangling from the grandiloquent ceiling of the Salon de Mars. “It makes me want to get a gun and shoot the bastard.” The man looks sane enough, and no doubt had prefaced his trip to Europe by eliminating sharp objects from his toiletry bag and meekly removing belt and shoes at airport security, yet here he is, all Charles Bronson-like, ready to gun down one of his country's best-known and most successful artists – because the work clashes with the decor.
Forget Serrano and Mapplethorpe, only Koons provokes such violence – and not just from normal folk, but serious-minded artworld people, too. The reasons for this ferocity of opinion are manifold, but Koons's brazen complicity in what many view a cynical art market leads the pack. And indeed the gamesmanship behind this show is impressive — financed in good part by François Pinault (with six of the 17 pieces drawn from his collections), assisted by Koons's other major investors (Eli Broad, Larry Gagosian, Dakis Joannou, Peter Brant, etc), directed by the former director of Pinault's collection and cocurated by a Pinault art consultant.
However, as artworks, or positional goods, or reified commodities, or whatever you want to call them, they've never been more forcefully presented. Nor more powerful. Arthur Danto once wrote of Koons that the museum gives us more immunity from the awfulness of his work than a gallery setting, because 'where there's nothing else but Koons it's more threatening since it looks like he's taken over the world'. At Versailles Koons has taken over not a world but a couple of centuries of art history, and his extravagant follies – all dating from 1981 to 2006 – have found perfect perch. Lobster (2003), for example, suspended in front of a middling copy of a Veronese, becomes a polychromed aluminium parody of the sublime, so frightfully attractive and repellent that viewing it conjures forth an aporetic apoplexy beyond Edmund Burke's wildest nightmares. Viral and virile, it turns everything in its orbit – tapestries, paintings, statuary, bedspreads, the logs in the chimney and the gardens out the window – into abominable whimsy. This isn't an art show, it's a coronation. After 25 years at the forefront of affront, Koons has executed his biggest piece of provocative kitsch ever. Vive le Roi!
Château de Versailles, Paris
10 September – 14 December
Review by Christopher Mooney
This latest attempt to transfuse fresh blood into the congested veins of French patrimony is, by Koons's standards, tastefully conceived. Oversize Toys 'R' Us tchotchkes and topiary, but no porn or ironic self-aggrandisement, beyond the marble bust of himself in the Salon d'Apollon, next to the famous Rigaud portrait (actually a studio-assistant copy) of the slim-legged Sun God in white tights.
Still, judging by most responses, perhaps the palace should have been walled off during Koon's three-month show, with discretionary warnings to the sensitive, as was done with Ilona's Asshole (1991) at his Chicago retrospective this summer.
“This is terrible”, says an American tourist next to me, eyes wide with horror at the sight of an 8-foot inflatable beach toy dangling from the grandiloquent ceiling of the Salon de Mars. “It makes me want to get a gun and shoot the bastard.” The man looks sane enough, and no doubt had prefaced his trip to Europe by eliminating sharp objects from his toiletry bag and meekly removing belt and shoes at airport security, yet here he is, all Charles Bronson-like, ready to gun down one of his country's best-known and most successful artists – because the work clashes with the decor.
Forget Serrano and Mapplethorpe, only Koons provokes such violence – and not just from normal folk, but serious-minded artworld people, too. The reasons for this ferocity of opinion are manifold, but Koons's brazen complicity in what many view a cynical art market leads the pack. And indeed the gamesmanship behind this show is impressive — financed in good part by François Pinault (with six of the 17 pieces drawn from his collections), assisted by Koons's other major investors (Eli Broad, Larry Gagosian, Dakis Joannou, Peter Brant, etc), directed by the former director of Pinault's collection and cocurated by a Pinault art consultant.
However, as artworks, or positional goods, or reified commodities, or whatever you want to call them, they've never been more forcefully presented. Nor more powerful. Arthur Danto once wrote of Koons that the museum gives us more immunity from the awfulness of his work than a gallery setting, because 'where there's nothing else but Koons it's more threatening since it looks like he's taken over the world'. At Versailles Koons has taken over not a world but a couple of centuries of art history, and his extravagant follies – all dating from 1981 to 2006 – have found perfect perch. Lobster (2003), for example, suspended in front of a middling copy of a Veronese, becomes a polychromed aluminium parody of the sublime, so frightfully attractive and repellent that viewing it conjures forth an aporetic apoplexy beyond Edmund Burke's wildest nightmares. Viral and virile, it turns everything in its orbit – tapestries, paintings, statuary, bedspreads, the logs in the chimney and the gardens out the window – into abominable whimsy. This isn't an art show, it's a coronation. After 25 years at the forefront of affront, Koons has executed his biggest piece of provocative kitsch ever. Vive le Roi!
Tags: christopher mooney, château de versailles, jeff koons, paris
