Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/04/25/jeff-koons-stainless-steel-rab.html
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Where is the camera?
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One of these rabbits was part of the (excellent) documentary The Price of Everything, covering in part how the art world has transformed into a finance game.
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Psssst!
“According to the site, purchases are limited to a maximum of 20 dogs per month so start collecting now!”
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Meh.
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Fifty to seventy million?? I’m with Mr. Burns on this one: “Mmm, I think I’d be happier with the money…”
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In case you didn’t already hate Jeff Koons, he recently fired much of his staff and replaced them with robots.
These were people who made his artwork for year if not decades. Highly skilled artists for whom this was a full time job.
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Something about his technique doesn’t sit right with me, he hires other artists (now apparently robots) to be his artists.
““I’m basically the idea person,” Jeff Koons once told an interviewer. “I’m not physically involved in the production. I don’t have the necessary abilities…”
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A potter friend of mine who works in another sculpurist’s studio was just complaining to me about this. He is one of the more mellow people I know, but his disdain for Koons was deep.
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But . . . that rabbit has no clothes!
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Oh yeah, this is a debate that’s been going on in the fine art world since Duchamp really… At a certain point, the traditional model of artist as craftsperson became less relevant, with both good and bad results. But Koons (and Warhol before him) hyper-charged this, turning the whole endeavor into artist as CEO. It’s important to recognize that dipshits like Koons and Damien Hirst were businessmen before they became professional artists. They relish in this effrontery to the art world as well - they think it means they’re “bad boys,” when they’re just shameless hucksters in a vapid capitalist enterprise.
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Thanks for the history. I also saw The Price of Everything. Koons definitely came off like a high class but tacky fraudster.
Compare to Gerhard Richter who wont even bless civilization and show up to his own auctions.
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Oh! I’ll have to see that, thanks for the rec. Though, as someone who has pretensions of being a painter, it will probably drive me to throw all my work in a wood chipper and take up gardening instead.
thanks. as far as I remember, every artist I know personaly hates him, even damien hirst isnt hated that much. and its not about envy, basically, its his meaningless shit and that he gives a fuck about art, but everything about money. but he is one of the biggest and most successful con-artists in the field, I give him that.
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I don’t loathe the “artist.”
I loathe rich people who are gulled into patronizing this loathsome “artist.”
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i’ve got a 4" x 8" swatch from christo’s piece “wrapped walkways” 1977-78 in kansas city, mo.
i saw one similar to it go at auction for $100 four or five years ago.
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I’m guessing that Koons takes the postition that the help aren’t really artists.
The only question is whether he prefers ‘craftsmen’ or ‘technicians’.
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Bram Stoker’s Photography: when only the best will do.
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I don’t know, but I suspect you’re right… Koons probably respects their craft, but doesn’t think they’re the ones making art.
Speaking as someone who went through art school, much contemporary art looks down on craft, putting conceptual inception above the technical process.1 In contemporary art school, the idea of the piece is generally more important than the technical creation itself (and that’s not always a bad thing!). But Koons takes this concept to the max and conceives of his role as that of CEO… Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPhone, but that’s what we hold to be the case (and it makes a amount of sense).
I went to school with a bunch of people who worked for Koons, and from what I’ve heard, they enjoyed it (and worked there for 10+ years). It was unlikely that someone else would have paid them to paint replicas of old master paintings, and the sculptors did some pretty amazing things to make those balloon animals (I don’t think it’s easy to get stainless steel to do that…). Still, like you intimate, it wasn’t like these people shared in the glory of the work, and certainly not the full material rewards (though I think Hirst now credits his craftspeople)… It’s like any other corporate structure where the person at the top is reaping rewards in vast disproportion to the laborers. That’s the part that’s gross and makes art seem less special than it should be.
1. this is a vast over-generalization. also, sorry if I just ranted at you stuff you already konw
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