Let’s profit off someone who thinks that profit is part of the problem.
Jeff Koons is a well-known artist, made famous by his attempts to use overblown glitzy sculptures of everyday scenes to draw a new meaning from objects we see on a daily basis. The piece to the right, “Balloon Dog,” now on the roof of the Met, is both a child’s toy made horrifyingly large, and apparently (if the New York Times is to be believed), a sexual twist on the innocent clown creation.
In short, Koons appropriates - he takes something we know, duplicates it in a subtly different way, and asks us to draw a new conclusion about something we feel comfortable looking at. Sometimes the “subtly different” presentation can be disturbing – look at his “String of Puppies” piece (look halfway down the page), which takes an idyllic, pastoral image of a happy farming couple and their new puppy brood, and turns it on its head by discoloring the participants, and rendering the farmer and wife with vacant, empty eyes. The scene is meant to comment on the commercialization of emotion, and I think the message comes across loud & clear.
Koons also doesn’t care about copyright. He got himself into hot water with the “String of Puppies” piece – the puppy picture had been a popular greeting card picture, and the creator didn’t appreciate having his picture turned into a mockery of itself - but his art and his message often require theft to convey the themes of the dangers of commercialized emotion. So I say, let’s go one better. Let’s rip off Jeff Koons.
Here’s what I’m thinking. “Balloon Dog,” above, and “Sacred Heart,” its companion piece (left; a commentary on commercialism, emotion, and religion), are iconic Koons images, made more so because of their prominent placement on the patio at the Met Museum. They’re also being presented in a way that completely strips them bare of their menacing message (I agree with the Times on this one), and in their decontextualized sense, they’re ripe for commentary. I accept the challenge.
Let’s mass-market desktop replicas of Balloon Dog & Sacred Heart. It’s clear copyright infringement, but if Koons is who he says he is, he’ll appreciate the message, won’t sue, and may actually like it. Now who do I call to create miniature steel statuettes?
I do not understand modern art at all. What happened to, “i bought that painting because it looked nice in my living room,”?
Posted by Progressive Conservative | June 9, 2008, 11:32 amI think people still do that. Koons is interesting for that point actually. It’s deliberately ironic, but it’s also pretty, and what’s so funny is to see it at the Met; everyone has their pictures taken in front of it (I did too!), so in the end, aesthetic trumps any hidden message. D’oh.
Posted by Ames | June 9, 2008, 11:35 amI dated a girl in college that was an art major. She did metal sculptures that were fairly commerical in their appeal, and honestly that was all she ever wanted to do was to make a little money off of them. I recall sitting up late several nights laughing our butts off as we tried to make up secret meanings for her pieces for her class the next day.
I have to say that every piece of artwork in our home (and there’s a fair amount) was chosen because we thought it looked cool and it matched the paint / furniture.
On the flip side though, I completely understand architecture in the ‘hidden meaning’ kind of way…so I guess I’m just thick-headed about art.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | June 9, 2008, 11:46 amNPR had a piece about this guy this morning. One of the comments from an interviewee was that Koons would have been good at selling swamp land in Florida.
Posted by Progressive Conservative | July 25, 2008, 8:23 amHA. That’s actually pretty right on… I love him, I do, but sometimes…
Posted by Ames | July 25, 2008, 11:15 am“Now who do I call to create miniature steel statuettes?”
If you’re serious and you can convince them that copyright won’t be a problem, outfits that do rapid prototyping will be able to print these in metal for you, if you’ve got them in the form of a CAD file. There’s an offshoot of RV Philips called Shapeways (at shapeways.com) that allows users to upload CAD files and have the items printed in plastic or, now, stainless steel. Think of Shapeways as like Cafe Press but in 3D. These rapid prototyping methods are used now by artists like Bathsheba Grossman to do reasonably priced metal sculptures (hers, mostly mathematically inspired are at bathsheba.com). However, rapid prototyping won’t give you any economies of scale.
If you want economies of scale, I’m sure there are any number of metal casting outfits that can do the job by that means and cheaper if you do enough of them, but I’ll leave the googling to you.
BTW, I have no commercial interest in either shapeways or Bathsheba Grossman’s work but I’m a fan and customer of the latter and have purchased works fabricated by shapeways.
Posted by Mike from Ottawa | September 23, 2009, 2:55 pmIt has been a couple of years since this was posted, but if interested, I was the assistant of Jeff Koons who sculpted the “Sacred Heart”. I know every crease, fold and crevice of it’s form, and would be delighted to reproduce it for mass production! If still interested feel free to contact me for the project.
Posted by José De Jesús | September 6, 2010, 11:31 pm