Review of Jeff Koons retrospective in Paris

8/10/2019 Review of Jeff Koons retrospective in Paris

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JEFF KOONS

LA RTROSPECTIVE

Le Centre Pompidou, Paris

November 26th

2014 April 27th

2015

Published as Koons in Paris: More Is Lessat Hyperallergic

http://hyperallergic.com/167545/koons-in-paris-more-is-less/

I like you just the way you are.

- Mr. Rogers

As we know, Koons looms large as the major symptom of the hype, hubris and moneythat have swamped the global art scene. His signature brand aesthetic of defiantly

vacuous hyper-commoditization is veined with suspicions of 1% financial empowerment

coupled to technological power. It assumes the mainstream fundamental dynamic of

public culture: the battle for your attention. This is what makes his art the most

recognizable and expensive in the world - work that is also the symbol (for some) of

flaccid degeneration.

For these, the success of Koonss empowered empty-headedness means that much of

arts worth has been depleted, as copiers of his victorious aesthetic of happy consumption

have turned more and more artists towards modes of expression that are unimpassioned

and imitative. However, with his Centre Pompidou rtrospective/celebration (as in New

York, comprehensive and chronological) I think I sensed that his treatment of art as

hypertrophied kitsch is in the process of concluding. At balance is the fate of originality.


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Large Vase of Flowers (1991) Polychromed wood, Edition no 3/3, Sammlung Ludwig Ludwig Forum fr

Internationale Kunst, Aix-la-Chapelle Jeff Koons


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Loopy (1999) oil on canvas, photo: Lawrence Beck, New York / Courtesy Sonnabend Gallery, Bill Bell collection

Jeff Koons

There is nothing intricate or subtle to engage with here. Typical with Koons, such as in

Large Vase of Flowers (1991) or Loopy (1999), ground never dominates over

configuration. As a consequence, his is not an art that needs to be interacted with

imaginatively. So, one never feels a sense of languor there. Indeed people seemed in a

hurry to move along, as clearly viewers are not in the presence of an invitation to reverie.

The work is never more affective than discursive - never more enigmatic than dogmatic -

as it contains very few possibilities of interpretation. Thus it never seems magical.

Plus, the work has no negative capability, as it is relentlessly upbeat in a way that is

untrue to life. The man himself, with his apparent insistent smiling cheeriness, suggests to

me a Scientologized Howdy Doody.


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Buster Keaton (1988) Polychrome wood, Edition no 3/3, The Sonnabend collection & Antonio Homem Jeff Koons

Much of the work, such as Buster Keaton (1988), is dreadfully simple, clear, direct,

conformist, maudlin, and sentimental. Indeed much is heavy-handedly zealous, huge,

gaudy, and uniformly simplistic, as we can see again with the three-meter Balloon Dog

(Magenta) (1994-2000), in Moon, and with the maudlin red Hanging Heart that was

set off against a splendid view of Paris (all three works from the Celebrationseries on

loan from French billionaire Franois Pinault).


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Balloon Dog (Magenta) (1994-2000) Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating, 1 of 5 unique

versions, Pinault collection Jeff Koons

These works, with their high prices, gives juice to the idea that it is wrong for art to be

difficult - because that leads to obscurantism, exclusion, and elitism. That it is right that

things be easy and entertaining. Indeed Koons is aggressively anti-intellectual and he

shuns aesthetic complexity. Consequently, his work is fodder for all that thwarts,

represses, starves, withers, deadens, limits, and narrows our real (complex) selves.


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Self-Portrait (1991) Marble, Edition of 3 + artists proof, photo: Douglas M. Parker Studios, Los Angeles Private

collection Jeff Koons

In the discourse around (and by) Koons, the heroic fight against art as elite class snobbery

is often heard. After examining his entire body of work, it is apparent to me that this is a

shinny red herring used to justify the dumb-down employed in his art, art that bends

towards the low hanging fruit of reductive simplification.


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Lobster (2003) Polychromed aluminum and coated steel chain, photo: Tom Powel Imaging, Collection of the artist

Jeff Koons

Koonss work never offers a sense of moreness- nor eloquence, mystery, poetry, tragedy,

delicacy or doubt. It is a globalized neo-conceptual art of appropriation and fabrication

that thrives in an environment where no dominant discourse determines artistic value. Yet

the work has one dominant feature. It partakes in the cult of the sweet child. Indeed

Koons prides himself in his works polite innocence: in its omission of significant

content. Yet I dont see it as innocent. Koonss work does nothing to disrupt cynical

power with innocence. In fact, it just inscribes elite power-wealth as innocent (which it is

not).

What is at stake with Koonss looming easy/nice/fun is the principle of anti-

foundationalism: the recognition of art as a means of seeing through Orwellian falseness,


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through the clichd, through the indifferent, through the tendentiousness of trumped-up,

hyped-up, falsified life of majority through attempts to reduce art to capitalist

propaganda.

With Koons, the point of view of the eye of your mind has no special claim. He limits

and demeans us by pandering to us as passive recipients. He never stirs in us

consciousness of our own unique existence something not achieved passively.

Koonss work has no complex inter-relational transitions. His work never reminds us that

the primary feature that distinguishes aesthetic consciousness is imagination and that

imagination entails visioning and symbolizing, areas of practice useful in heightening

perception and intuition. Indecision, ambiguity and conflict never become dynamic and

useful values in his work. With Koons, never are we challenged with what I think of as

the responsibility of looking - where we can re-appropriate our senses and our fragile

capacity to visualize on a personal basis - something that cannot be appropriated by

capital.

Koonss rtrospective proves illusionary the Baudrillardian ideal of subversive

conformity popular in the 1980s. At the Pompidou, there is nothing suggestive of the

anti-pop (no-logo) struggle that is taking place around the world (particularly in youth

culture). There is nothing indicative of social relationships outside of passive pop

consumption. The accustomed platitudes of the corporate logo model for art (immediate

and bright) are never submitted to transformation. Indeed, the feeling here is of a

corporate stooge tightening the tourniquet of powerlessness about our eyes and throat.

Here we cannot take back our head.

Joseph Nechvatal

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Review of Jeff Koons retrospective in Paris