Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Best Art for Entertainment's Sake

Friday night I went and checked out the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney. Say what you will about him, or his work, the show was entertaining. And it's not like I don't know who Jeff Koons is! I took Art Law. Sometimes it's fun to just go look at some art and say "Ha, look what he did!"

His new thing right now are these chromed-out replicas of classic sculptures.


He made his own Liberty Bell.


Allegedly it was a fully operational Hulk-organ but, you know how it is at art museums, "No Touching" and such.


"A perfect duplicate of an imperfect sculpture" the wall art said.


It took me too many rooms to catch on that these pool toys aren't "real" but metal reproductions. 


Not rubber!


Not Play-Doh. I don't think.






Meta.














Listen, say what you will about all the other stuff


But Koons's water-filled basketball perfectly suspended in tanks of water are pretty wild. It's really doing it! There's no strings or tricks, just water of different densities. Science! I was on a trip to the science museum.






I say you could do a lot worse with your Pay What You Want money on a Friday night.

1 comment:

Dad said...

The kitten and flowers is the best.

I don't regard him as an artist of a lasting reputation. He is a master of kitsch and marketing, a Thomas Kinkade for the in crowd.