Friday, May 13, 2011

shiny plastic things

Someone call the old news police: Jeff Koons makes me angry, and he's not doing himself any favors. Motherfucker tried to trademark the balloon dog. You can't take unArt, put quotations around it, call it Art and then claim you invented the unArt, too. I can't really think of anything more arrogant. That's like Danger Mouse suing Kanye for sampling the same song.

Koons' paintings and installations look like they were generated by the same team of manatees that splice together Family Guy's random, plot-less jokes.
Effectively commenting on, and skewering, kitsch and American culture through art relies on context. But his art relies on the insecurity of the viewer to force meaning and context, when it isn't there, just to feel like they "get it."

Unless you wear stocking caps with Anime ears, this will make you angry.
Every few months I go online and make myself sit through a few sideshows of his work, to see if my perceptions have changed. It only gets worse. Koons is the original Thierry Guetta, paying a small army of artisans to create his next empty abomination of juxtopostion.

He is as offensively shallow and uninteresting as Lady Gaga, and as cynical and commercially viable.

Who do you think is the worst "post-modern" cash whore? 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol art wut

- Abby

lrae said...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=136202555

not much of a response, more of...."look, people are infatuated with this man's art!"

Warped Coasters said...

That's interesting, Earl. I'm not quite sure what to think of it. In some ways I like massive installations because they distort the perception and feeling of space and proportion around you. But on the other hand it seams conceptually easy to just make giant things, if you have the means. You?

lrae said...

First, I must correct myself - i was mixing bubble and balloon artists. Koons, the rich pompous dude and Anish Kapoor, the sensationalist/monumentalist, should not be confused. Pardon me.

The work of Kapoor creates a sense of awe, demands respect for the abyss, and all the while creating a sense of calm that I would happily share silence with.


(in June, I will be inside that giant "blood-colored, globulous balloon"..with the one and only)

Also, possibly my favourite work of Kapoor's:

http://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/microsites/anish_kapoor/secciones/galeria_imagenes/galeria_imagenes_detalle.php?idioma=en&id_imagen=28

Warped Coasters said...

I like Kapoor overall and should not be compared to Koons, who is an ass hat.