THREE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT JEFF KOONS

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Has every bad thing that can possibly be said about the art of Jeff Koons been said already?

It is worth revisiting this question at regular intervals because you don't want to let an opportunity go by. You never know when someone might invent a new word for "stinks."

There are many reasons for disliking Koons' work. My personal favorite is that he pilfers images from honest, underpaid commercial artists, sprinkles them with an invisible layer of irony and resells them as "fine" art for huge sums.

Nevertheless, a person would need a pretty good excuse to expend fresh energy attacking Koons' work. By now most sensible people recognize that Koons' true talent lies only in his ability to mesmerize the tasteless rich. To revisit such well trod criticisms might cause one to be ejected from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dead Horses.

Well, here at the good ol' Illustration Art blog, we believe in accentuating the positive, so I have attempted to come up with three reasons to like Koons' work:

Reason no. 1: I like his attitude. Koons seems to have genuine fun with what he is doing. He takes explicit photographs of himself having sex with a porn star and displays them to the world. He spends lavishly on art by artists with more talent (but less marketing skill) than himself. He lives life large, taking full advantage of his superstar status. It's difficult not to respect that.

Cheeky, sold for $4 million

Reason no. 2: He inspires others to new heights of creativity. Koons' work is so bad, his marketing machine is forced to be highly imaginative to persuade people to buy such twaddle. Take for example the following frothy persiflage from Sotheby's shameless Alex Trotter promoting the sale of the painting "Cheeky:"

An outstanding example of [Koons'] satirical commentary on late 20th-century society, this work has his traits of technical excellence and common subject matter while invoking lingering questions of irony versus sincerity-- what is the intent of the artist? Is he serious or is there an element of mockery? This oil on canvas work is composed of disconnected images and high definition colors, executed with photorealistic perfection. The random association of food, landscape and sex is a metaphor for the bombardment of stimuli present in modern life, while the size and fragmentation of the images further impedes their comprehension.

Trotter bastes the painting with irony like a pastry glaze, preparing it for consumption by investment bankers (who only achieved their rank in life by being impervious to genuine irony). Koons of course insists that there is no irony or agenda beneath the surface of his images-- that is, until someone sues his ass for copyright infringement, at which point he reverses himself and swears under oath that his work was not theft because it was intended as a "parody." See, for example, Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301 (2d Cir. 1992); See also UFS Inc. v. Koons, 817 F. Supp 370 (S.D.N.Y. 1993); Campbell v. Koons, No. 91 Civ. 6055, 1993 WL 97381 (S.D.N.Y. Apr 1, 1993).

Reason no. 3: Koons' art performs an important social function. A private art market within a free society is one of the most finely tuned instruments for exposing the morons among us.  Art is so broad and subjective, and means such different things to different people, it is almost impossible to find an objective truth in art.  Koons' art can fill this vacuum, serving as an objective, unerring compass needle for identifying decadence and bad taste.  The Koons needle is not misled by commercial success; it is not confused by Wall Street quants who have outsourced their taste to consultants. It performs a valuable social function by pointing out those art "experts" who gush about the enigmatic otherness of a puppy dog sculpture, and who persuade credulous corporate moguls that if they spend millions on such crap they will be entitled to brag (as Mr. Brandt did recently), "my whole philosophy of life revolves around aesthetics."  With Koons as our lodestone, we will always have a surefire detector of artistic fraudsters.

The lesson of today's post is: you might not think it is possible to find something good to say about Koons, but if you keep a positive mental attitude, you can find some good in everyone.

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GIRLS GATHERING FLOWERS

### The surest way to breach the dividing line between gods and mortals is with girls gathering flowers by a stream.


Vassar college girls practicing their Greek dances, circa 1923

When mighty Zeus spied the beautiful Europa picking flowers by a river, he fell crazy in love and-- adopting the shape of a white bull-- carried Europa off across the waters to Crete (causing pandemonium amongst both mortals and gods).


Titian

Zeus and Europa had three legendary children and gave rise to a continent named Europe, a moon of Jupiter named Europa, and a constellation of stars named Taurus (the bull).

Who would have guessed that a girl gathering flowers in a meadow would transform the stars?

The story of Europa and the Bull is hardly unique. Roberto Calasso observed that gods have repeatedly been lured down from heaven by girls picking flowers:

How did it all begin? A group of girls were playing by the river gathering flowers. Again and again such scenes were to prove irresistible to the gods. Persephone was carried off "while playing with the girls with the deep cleavages." She too was gathering flowers... mainly narcissi, "that wondrous, radiant flower, awesome to the sight of gods and mortals alike." Thalia was playing ball in a field of flowers on the mountainside when she was clutched by an eagle's claws: Zeus again. Creusa felt Apollo's hands lock around her wrists as she bent to pick saffron on the slopes of the Athens Acropolis.

And those were only the beginning. In the tale of Cupid and Psyche, the Roman god of love broke the rules by falling in love with the mortal Psyche who, depending on the version of the story you read, was either picking flowers or receiving flowers given in tribute to her beauty.


Cupid and Psyche by Bouguereau

Meanwhile, over in Mexico the gods spotted Princess Iztacihuatl taking "long walks picking flowers along...a lovely mountain spring" and were so smitten that when she came to a tragic end, the gods intervened and "turned her into a beautiful white mountain to watch over the Mexica people and bring joy to their sight with her beauty."


Princess Iztacihuatl and her mountain

Why do gods repeatedly abandon heaven to pursue mortal girls picking flowers? The gods are clearly unimpressed by earthly power or wealth, yet they are moved by the most gentle, delicate things-- sunlight on a particular face, or flowers in someone's hair-- to come down and wreak havoc, creating whole mountains or scattering constellations across the night sky.

Sometimes things that seem small and mortal are in reality immense and divine. It's just that they can only be experienced in small and mortal increments.

You may wonder why any of this is relevant to a blog about art (apart from the fact that this is the first week of spring and at such a season, no topic other than girls and flowers is conceivable).

The answer is that the same types of inspiration that lure gods down from the heavens seem to raise artists up to immortality. History is full of scruffy lowlife artists who were moved by the inspiration of girls and flowers to create divine and timeless works of beauty.

When Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy, first saw his beloved Beatrice he felt certain that a deity had come to earth. He famously declared, "Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi" (Behold, a god stronger than I, who coming, shall rule over me.) There's that crazy multiplier again: an artist's brief glimpse of a (probably not very bright) teenage girl sparks one of the greatest works of literature in the history of the world.

Such transformations by artists are even more miraculous than Zeus transforming his mortal lover Callisto into the stars of the heavens.

Artist Gaston Lachaise spotted a woman he declared his "goddess" when she was strolling through gardens by the river Seine. He (accurately) said, she “immediately became the primary inspiration which awakened my vision...." (and transformed him from a bum to an internationally renowned artist). Bonnard spotted a young woman who made wreaths and who went on to transform his artwork and his life. Gustav Klimt's affair with a housewife led to a $135 million portrait (the most expensive painting in history up to the time of the sale) and a quarrel among nations. Time and again the smallest, humblest most mortal experiences are transformed by this thaumaturgic process into something universal and divine.

Experiences that blur the dividing line between gods and mortals can be so slight and unobtrusive they sometimes escape human attention, but it's pretty darn clear they haven't escaped the attention of the gods.

It's springtime. Pay attention. ###