Bob Ross is a completely different animal. He wasn’t about his paintings - he was about getting people to paint. His show, The Joy of Painting, summed it up in the title. He wasn’t trying to be the next great artist, nor was he trying to make a niche for himself like Kinkade. No, he wanted to give the people the tricks and tools in order for them to paint, with out all the lofty bullshit that gets thrown around in the fine art world. He didn’t even sell his paintings. He made his money from books and later branded art supplies.
While I don’t want my painting to look like Bob Ross’, I do want to paint like Bob Ross.
Also - fun fact - he spent 20 years in the Air Force as a Sargent. He was the guy who yelled at you all day, and when he got out he decided he wouldn’t yell at anyone ever again.
The article didn’t really address my pet theory, that for something to increase or decrease in popularity, there has to be some sort of oscillation. Kinkade paintings build negative resonance, and exposure to an artist you like will build positive resonance each time you discover a new facet that makes you marvel. If one viewing is negative, and another positive, well, that just ruins the resonance right there and feelings lessen back to the rest position of “meh”.
Yeah, but his stuff just looks bad, and every time I see it I like it less.
That’s why I was so ready to believe the story about Koons being an asshat to a museum’s gift shop when he found out they were selling a toy or pencil sharpener or whatever that looked like a balloon animal (reported here in BoingBoing a while back). Apparently he was claiming copyright on the thing, though IIRC it was actually based on prior art and not labelled in any way as being based on his work. I don’t know if the story is true or not, but the guy does seem to have crossed the line from merry prankster troll to money-grubbing troll in most anecdotes that are passed on to me.
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.
My one complaint is that the generation of mega-artists we have now is sucking up all the resources. Koons is probably responsible for putting the best West Coast art fabricator out of business with those big stainless steel dogs and his perfectionism.
Which still begs the question of how I dislike his artwork on a personal, visceral level every time I see it. My point is that my personal dislike of the artwork makes me more susceptible to believe the nasty stories about the artist, though who knows? Maybe it is the other way around, but there is enough other weird and interesting stuff that I like and want to explore to spend time trying to hack my brain into liking Koons’ work.
Edit: I accidentally wrote “like” instead of “dislike”. Oopsie.
Well, after all I do agree with you the work is hideous. Isn’t that funny? I should have said that at the top.
I would rather spend my time with the work of artists who find the making of the work enough of a challenge and will leave social engineering the wealthy to others. TIm Hawkinson, Charles Ray, Nancy Rubins, a Google image search of any of those names would bring you hours of joy.
I have a respect for Koon’s, though. I think his work is a phenomenal achievement.
