ART

NATURAL BORN ARTIST OR SELLER

the Jeff Koons Experience 

By Madison Brooks

The man and his creations

The name Jeff Koons has buzzed through the art world for nearly two decades. He is distinguished for his sculptures that depict pop culture icons like Michael Jackson, his Neo-Geo and Neo-Pop installations, as well as his work with his porn star wife, at the time a member of the Italian parliament. Fundamentally different from his peers Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Sol, Eric Kesha and Francesco Clemente, Koons is first and foremost a businessman or an artist who thinks that an artist is first and foremost a business. And on the level of business, well, Koons pieces have sold for record auction prices: $58.4 million for Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013 and $91.1 million for Rabbit in 2019. Koon’s financial success has brought him many detractors and critics, almost all of whom start with accusations of Koons’ previous career as a commodity broker on Wall Street (1979-1984). The question becomes: Is Jeff Koons a natural born artist or natural born seller?

Detractors call his pieces crude, derivative, expensive, and vacuous. Although Koons says that his artwork has no right and wrong interpretations, he thinks that critics are “gatekeepers to the artworld” and antithetical to his goals of selling and popularity. Koons believes that the popular and accessible nature of his work is why critics demean his many successes. This does not, however, make him immune to the criticism, as Jerry Saltz recalls. "In a Madrid club in 1986, I watched him confront a skeptical critic while smashing himself in the face, repeating, 'You don't get it, man. I'm a fucking genius.’ The fit passed when another critic, the brilliant Gary Indiana, said, 'You are, Jeff.'"

Gary Indiana: "You are, Jeff."

Despite the harsh criticisms, Koons has done his homework and amassed an expansive background in the arts. At eight years old he began producing replicas of Old Master paintings, which his father sold in his shop in York, Pennsylvania. Even before he was ten, Koons never worked for free. One could say he became the living embodiment of Jeff Goines’ manifesto, Real Artists Don’t Starve, which challenges the myth that artists should be poor.

Koons' interest in the arts grew as a teenager and when he had the opportunity to meet his hero, the extremely market-oriented artist, Salvador Dalí, he took it. Koons called the hotel where Dali was staying and managed to get through. Dali offered to meet Koons and together they attended an exhibition of his work at the Knoedler Gallery. The young master seller, Koons, is introduced to the old master seller, Dali, and gets a few lessons on the intricacies of the art world.

Dali knew a bit about selling an image

After graduating from high school, Koons enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he continued to cultivate his interest in Dali, painting Neo-Surrealist dreamscapes. Studying in Chicago for a year, Koons returned to the Maryland Institute College of Art, where he graduated with a BFA in 1976. In 1977, after graduating from college, Koons moved to Manhattan and was employed at the Museum of Modern Art selling memberships, a job he excelled at. It was during this time, as he was soaking up the energy and culture of the punk and new wave scenes at clubs like CBGB and the Mudd Club, that he met slightly older artists David Salle and Julian Schnabel, both firmly established reputations in the emerging East Village arts scene.

Koons might have been rejecting the mainstream art world as many in the East Village scene were, but Koons was embracing something entirely different than his peers. Here was an artist fully engaged in the brand aesthetics of advertising. Viewed by collectors as a walking, breathing investment, Koons sees himself as producing pure economic value. Collectors therefore not only want to invest in individual pieces by him, but in the entire Jeff Koons experience. Collectors’ interest in Koons is in his ability to create art that has pure market value. Art historian Robert Pincus-Witten, director of exhibitions at C&M Arts (now Mnuchin Gallery) from 1996 to 2007 says, “While artists typically separate art and money, Koons’s art addresses market forces head on. Jeff recognizes that works of art in a capitalist culture inevitably are reduced to the condition of commodity. What Jeff did was say, ‘Let’s short-circuit the process. Let’s begin with the commodity.’”

Art of commodity?

Withholding any personal viewpoints on Koons’ career, he has fundamentally mastered the control of his own art, or as he might put it, products. His career is really that of adapting his work to selling, a kind of pure capitalism. Koons says his intentions are to “find the notion of professional art criticism in opposition to his ideals of acceptance.” In the 2016 retrospective of Koons' work, Guardian critic Jonathan Jones wrote that Koons "is the Donald Trump of art. In what is now a pretty long career, Koons has done more than any other human being to destroy taste, sensitivity, and the idea that striking it rich as an artist has anything to do with talent."

Despite numerous criticisms concerning Koons’ artistic abilities, his aesthetic influence is present in a wide-range of artists, including Isa Gentzken and Hank Willis. Most prominently, Koons has had a significant influence on Damien Hirst, well known English artist, entrepreneur, and art collector. Hirst believes that, "a great reaction to any art is 'Wow!', and Jeff's work is full of that. ... Makes me think about America - all the shit about America, and all the great things about America at the same time." Hirst's deceased shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991) is a direct response to Koons' “Equilibrium” series. In the late-1990s and early-2000s, American artist Paul McCarthy created a number of sculptures based on Koons' Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988) including Michael Jackson and Bubbles (Gold) (1997-99) and Michael Jackson Fucked Up (Big Head) (2002-10).

Is this the work of a hack?

Koons markets himself with calculated persistence, which is the key to closing a sale. His innovative and audacious methods have made him, in terms of sale price, the most successful living artist since the sale of his stainless-steel sculpture “Rabbit, which sold for $91,000,000 in 1986. Scott Reyburn of the New York Times says that Koons’ metal sculptures have become the “ultimate billionaire trophies,(2019) responds to the record breaking sale.

The question is: Is Jeff Koons a natural born artist or natural born seller?

Koons' rise to prominence in the mid-1980s came with Wall Street-grade experience in selling, but also a keen awareness of the growing spectacle surrounding a media-saturated era. His stated artistic intention was to “communicate with the masses,” aware that he could captivate viewers with luxurious icons and elaborate tableaux. Exploiting the ability to regulate his own economic value and control of his own commodity has led him to immense financial success. The critical attacks against Koons and his art a kind of fashionable art world response. Acknowledging this, his financial success and career must be viewed separately. His unconventional artistic career entices detractors to his artwork, but also his intentions as a fine artist. Koons has operated his career opposing the standard assumption that an artist must financially struggle to live in order to create their work.

©Madison Brooks and the CCA Arts Review