I tried to read the comments on the other post. Urf, it seems to come down to some kind of bitterness at the guy’s success. The issue with the bookends would come down to how the bookstore was advertising them. You’ll notice Cory carefully avoided that issue. I am not going to go and research it because I don’t expect artists to be saints or even to be reasonable people. That isn’t where success in the arts comes from. He oversteps and thinks he is special? Wow.
Anyway, Koons work is the perfect reflection of our society right now. Right down to his completely plastic personality and the disappearance of the real Jeff Koons into the product Jeff Koons. He took what Andy Warhol showed us and took it up about ten notches.
The best part is that the rich empty heads he parodies are correctly advised by their art advisors (oh yes, they do) that Koons is a must have in a serious collection right now. This is both correct and incredibly ironic.
Only in Fine Art will you find this kind of self-examination that is absolutely brutally honest at some level. The other branches of the arts are still sucking up to the collector class, as does the huge majority of the fine art world. But there is enough intelligence in the upper reaches, at least among the hired help, to bring this work right into the heart of the beast. Koons does that because he is smart and intuitive.
