Reflective Log/ Artist Connection: Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons has been a strong influence throughout my work, and his Balloon Dog Orange is one of the main reasons I am most interested with the art market and the price and selling of artwork.

This is an article by Emma Brockes for the Guardian, published 05/07/15. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/05/jeff-koons-people-respond-to-banal-things-they-dont-accept-their-own-history [Accessed 25/07/15]

Key points of this article & my reflections:

• "When it sold for $58m, his Balloon Dog became the most expensive artwork by a living artist. Are the critics right to dismiss his work as ‘smug’ and ‘baloney’, or is he justified in saying it teaches us a vital lesson about materialism?" (Brockes, 2015). The comment about teaching us a lesson about materialism is one I agree with. I think Koons' work critiques consumer culture and that is why I am so intrigued by his work, and want to make work that also critiques consumer culture.

• "Balloon Dog, the 10ft-tall steel sculpture that sold for $58m two years ago, is, depending on your view, either a brilliant and playful portal to the infinite, or a work of utter pointlessness, but either way, Koons is assumed to have profited from a certain credulousness that entered the art world along with all that money"(Brockes, 2015). 

• "A lot of Koons’ works is big; he uses size to defamiliarise everyday objects"(Brockes, 2015). This is a good point, we feel more attracted to these everyday objects when they are coated in high shine chromium finish on a larger scale than we could ever imagine. This could be a point for me to consider, perhaps to make larger artwork. 

• "One of his first important works, The New, was a series of box-fresh vacuum cleaners suspended in perspex boxes, a commentary on the fetishistic appeal of consumer culture that he would deepen over the years. The fact that his critique of materialism has, since then, itself become a valuable commodity either proves the artist’s point or entirely demolishes the work’s symbolic integrity. Koons himself will not be drawn on the issue of money and those insane sums his work goes for are, he says, in the secondary art market and nothing to do with him." (Brockes, 2015) A comment on his involvement (or non involvement) within the market or perhaps denial, especially as it states he was a stock broker before hand, perhaps he now knows how to condition the market? 

Further Research

Rabbit, 1986, stainless steel, 41 x 19 x 12 inches , 104.1 x 48.3 x 30.5 cm, © Jeff Koons, Edition of 3 plus AP

• Jeff Koons Rabbit is chrome cast just like his Balloon Dog sculptures, using the same seductive techniques. 

Made in 'Eaven, 2004, Mark Leckey

• Koon's Rabbit has also been featured in Mark Leckey's appropriation titled 'Made in 'Eaven', 2004, which shows a CGI highly reflective room, again commenting on this reflective quality that is so seductive to the viewer and consumer. This perhaps is an even more ironic critique of consumerism through critiquing a piece of art that comments on consumerism.