Thinkalikes

Thirty-one years apart Jeff Koons with his bronze life preserver and Ai Weiwei with carved marble life savers come up with the same sink or sink concept.

Top: Jeff Koons Snorkel Vest, bronze (1985) and bottom, Ai Weiwei Tyre, marble (2016)

Skin in the game

There aren’t many major companies that don’t call on an artist from time to time to give their brands an upward spin. Nike has just called on Martino Gamper, a regular exhibitor in NZ with Francis Upritchard, and he's answered the call. Gamper used one of Nike's new high-tech knit materials to fit out some drum kits with Nike skins. Who knows what they sound like?(well Nike probably do) but they look sharp and Gamper has added his own touches to the drum sides. You can see more here.

Other art brand combos from OTN
Jeff Koons and Dom Pérignon
Ralph Hotere and Westpac
Damien Hirst and Alexander McQueen
Gilbert and George and Comme des Garçons
Cindy Sherman and MAC
Salvador Dali and Chupa Chups
Jenny Holtzer and Keds

Balls up

Buying the art is one thing, owning it is another. The days when you just hung it on a wall and forgot about it (looking-after-wise) have long gone. Imagine, for instance, owning something by perfectionist Jeff Koons. His demands for his work are so extreme that the Guggenheim Museum once put off mounting a survey show because finding 'the technology to match Jeff’s vision became impossible.' And then we saw this version of Koons's Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tanks. The three basketballs are intended to be symmetrically suspended in the sodium chloride reagent. The basketballs are at such a specific point of equalibrium with the liquid they are immersed in that even the vibrations from people walking by can affect the balance. The solution has to be changed every time the piece is installed and constantly monitored if the work is to be presented as Koons intended. 'Oh, oh, Jeff’s coming. Get the pump.'

Reflections

We’ve always been great Géricault fans, largely thanks to J L Steele and C F Goldie’s steal The arrival of the Maoris in New Zealand at the Auckland Art Gallery. Over the years we've chased down parodies, copies and versions of the Géricault original that you can visit (or revisit) from the list below. This post was prompted by seeing the latest Jeff Koons painting show at Gagosian Gallery in New York. Koons has placed his well known, blown glass blue gazing balls in front of an art history top of the pops including Géricault ‘s The raft of the Medusa. The balls sit on small shelves attached to what look like silkscreened images of the paintings. Koons being Koons though, they were in fact painstakingly painted by studio assistants to very different scales from their originals. For example Koons' Medusa work is a mini-version of the 5 x 7 meter monster in the Louvre. Wandering around the vast spaces you can think about originality and the historical nature of painting as a medium and how he chose his masters, or you calculate how many hours it took how many assistants to paint them. According to Koons the tiny image of us reflected in the blue ball as in the photograph above shows our 'desires…interests… participation and relationship with this image'. Treat them gently, it’s nearly Christmas.
Image: Koons does Géricault at Gagosian

Previously on OTN:
Copy that
Flotsam or jetsam?
A raft too far
All at sea
Raft of references
Copycats

Prepare for glory: 100

The Art Review 'Power 100' is out again with its list of 75 powerful men headed by Nicholas, David and Iwan. This year a woman did sneak up into  the top ten. It was Marina Abramovic of course up from possie number 11 last year and judged to be more powerful than Jeff Koons. In the top 25 there were seven women with three of them in the top 10. They included two artists with Cindy Sherman taking slot 10, up from 13 last year. The criteria may be dubious but who can resist a list? There are even some NZ connections to be made. Two Walters Prize judges made the top 100 - Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev at 19 and this year’s judge Charles Esche on the list for the first time as number 87.  A number of the 'powerful' artists have shown in NZ but the City Gallery scored two big ones Rosemarie Trockel (slot 63) and Yayoi Kusama (slot 52) who both had solo shows. And that's not to forget the National Art Gallery's solo exhibition of Cindy Sherman way back in 1989. Then, with the rise and rise of the dealers, lets give a nod to Simon Denny’s German dealer Daniel Buchholz who came in at number 67. You can study the full list here.

Image: OTN breakdown chart of the Art Review 'Power 100' occupations

Lawn dog

You look out the window at the small plot of grass and garden and think, ‘what could I put there that would brighten the place up?’ The answer lies in China - a Jeff Koons Balloon Dog either full size or (if you really want to annoy the neighbours) even bigger. Is such a thing even possible? Sure it is. You just need to get onto Vincentaa Landscape & Architect Sculpture Co’s website and order one up at a cost of between $500 (we assume for a smaller dog) to $5,000 (who knows how big). Vincentaa can knock you up 10 of these a week, not that you will probably need 10 but who knows, economies of scale etc. Once it’s made your dog goes to Tianjin Xingang Port in a ‘strong seaworthy iron frame’ and then to you. If you really want to add some grunt to your front you can also order up a 30 meter reflecting Anish Kapoor like the one in Chicago on the same site.

Numbers: international edition

57     the number in billions of dollar a year that is the estimated size of the contemporary art market

69     the number in thousands of square feet that is the footprint of the three buildings occupied by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

74     the percentage of people making a living from the arts in New York who are white

75     the number of artists in New York thought to earn seven figure sums from their work

75     the number of plane and truck shipments needed to get all the work delivered to the Jeff Koons retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York

80      the percentage of visitors who are attracted by temporary exhibitions when they visit the famously successful Tate in London

200    the figure in millions of dollars that represents the estimated value of the works in the Jeff Koons retrospective

246    the number in millions of dollars that British artist Damien Hirst was said to be worth in 2012

100    the number in thousands of square feet that will be the footprint of the dealer gallery Hauser Wirth & Schimmel when it opens in Los Angeles

1575  the estimated number of art museums in the United States

1964   the year American critic Arthur Danto coined the phrase ‘The art world’

The money go round

"We have spared no expense to match his vision”

Adam D. Weinberg Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art speaking at the Jeff Koons survey opening this week

Art stars

In the era before Jeff Koons, Marina Abramovic, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, celebrity artists were just that; celebrities who also made art. Back then such artists tended to find themselves tucked into the Samuel Johnson category “like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

Of course some of them had done time at art school and (like actors who can also sing) were perfectly capable of turning out something convincing. So here’s a little match-the-celebs-to-their-artwork competition to keep you busy for a couple of minutes. The artist-celebs are:
Marilyn Manson
Sly Stallone
Bob Dylan
Tony Bennett
Anthony Quinn
Peter Falk
David Bowie.

You can find names and works matched here on OTN Stuff.

Today is brought to you by the letter P

On the road to Auckland channeling the Koons Puppy and Serra's Prop

From the stream

Lady Gaga uses Twitter yesterday to announce her new record cover designed by Jeff Koons.
 
Other OTN stories on artist record covers:
Warhol and The Stones I
Warhol and The Stones II
Art on albums

Big art from small goods

From the bacon obsessed internet some other deli products to buy up for your next Gagosian themed party here on the omg blog.
Images: Sausage poodle and Mother and child, with no apologies to Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst that we could find anyway. (Thanks M)

Jeff my bubbles

The way artists are associating themselves and their art with high-end brands (what the advertising industry calls ‘partner brands’) has totally insinuated itself into the artworld but artists then denying that they do it, now that is a little more rare. Here’s Jeff Koons commenting on his recent association with Dom Pérignon

“I don’t do very many product associations, but you know Dom Pérignon is a fantastic brand, a wonderful Champagne.”

Other product associations with the Jeff Koons’s brand:
Illy - coffee sets
Bernardaud – illustrated porcelaine plate
BMW – car
FIFA World Cup - print
Supreme decks - skateboard
Kiehl’s – body products
Lisa Perry – fashion
Ikepod - wristwatch

Image: A bottle of champagne (rosé) with its limited edition stand by Koons (the bottle rests on the sculpture between pours) on sale at US $20,000.

Guarded

On Saturday in New York we were able to see not one but two big exhibitions of Jeff Koons. Infamously the two shows were on at two competing dealer mega galleries Gagosian and David Zwirner.  David Zwirner has only ever lost one of his big-time artists (that was Franz West and he went to Gagosian) and Gagosian doesn't like losing anything so all eyes are on how this Koons arrangement evolves. And how the hell Koons pulled off  this doubles stunt is anyone’s guess but it's definitely a muscle flexing demo of his pulling power with rich collectors. Anyway there were Koons to burn at both barn-sized spaces but very different approaches to their ARIPs (Audience Relationship Interface Protocols).

Gagosian was guard heavy. Ten of them in fact (more than one per work which were in fairness finger-licking shiny stainless steel) and dressed in black along with a grey-suited boss who scuttled around repositioning his team like a neurotic cricket captain adjusting the out field. No touching, no photography, no bags. When we did take a photo from the street through the window a guard inside was not a happy person.

At Zwirmer's a couple of guards handled the whole area. Photography was fine, posing in front of the works was ok and bags and backpacks didn’t seem to be a problem.

Then we went to Zwirner’s other gigantic gallery on the next block to look at sculpture from another galaxy altogether.

Images: Guarding Koons at David Zwirner Gallery in Chelsea.

Be nice

"If you're critical you're already out of the game."
Jeff Koons quoted by one of his dealers David Zwirner in New York magazine

SFW

As Te Papa prepares its own Andy Warhol exhibition it will be aware of the controversy over the censoring of Warhol’s work in Asia. The latest bout started when his portraits of Mao Tse Tung were excluded from the exhibition Andy Warhol: 15 minutes eternal shows in Beijing by the Chinese Ministry of Culture. More weirdly the Singapore Government also put the skids under the Mao pics in the same exhibition for a very specific reason. It does not allow political leaders to be represented in works of art. At all. While not a great moment for audiences or curatorial independence, before we get too carried away let's acknowledge our own well developed mode of censorship - self-censorship.

The self-censorship by curators and museums has ensured that virtually nothing has been seen of Warhol’s homoerotic work of the seventies: not his best work, doesn’t fit the curatorial theme, wrong dates etc. etc. The definitive MoMA retrospective had only three mild examples as opposed to 10 images of Mick Jagger. Needless to say examples of this work won't be seen touring Asia any time soon. The pages illustrating this post show the absurdity of where this can all lead. Here's what Frankfurt’s very reputable Kunsthalle did to Jeff Koons’s Made in heaven series in their catalogue for a recent Koons painting show and made itself look ridiculous in the process. Which of course is what censorship is good at.

Image: The Kunsthalle Frankfurt catalogue featuring a carefully trimmed ‘detail’ of Glass dildo by Jeff Koons. Yes, that it is Cicciolina's high-heeled foot you can see.

When good sculpture turns bad

This barely squeezes into our series on public sculpture When good public sculpture turns bad, but it’s near enough since this particular one's having a double anniversary this year. That's 20 years since Jeff Koons’s Puppy was erected at Documenta 9 (Koons wasn’t invited but went anyway) and 15 years since it was showcased outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao at its opening. And that's where this story starts. 

As Puppy stood in readiness for the Museum's big opening day, its 43-foot frame covered with 20,000 individual flowering plants, three members of the Basque separatist group ETA set out to disrupt the opening and possibly kill or injure King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. The plan was to plant explosives in potted plants and detonate them via remote control during the opening events on the Saturday. 

On the Monday morning before, two policemen saw a suspicious-looking van parked in a side street near the Museum. The number plates turned out to be false and the police saw three men dressed as gardeners carrying potted plants toward Puppy. When the 'gardeners' saw the police approaching they fired four shots killing police officer Jose María Aguirre. The police took up the chase and soon all three were apprehended along with more explosives and firearms. The square where Koons’s Puppy now stands is named after the murdered policeman.

Hirst’s castle

“Could you just stand on one leg up there on the plinth?” How many artists get to hear this sort of request from photographers? Many resist but some just can’t. Following super-mugger Jeff Koons, here is the leading British entry Damien Hirst featuring five of his favourite themes, arm-work, face mugging, hand-work, wide-open and head-to-head. 

As a Friday extra some Hirst related quotes.
“There’s no reasonable ‘why’ to it—just a big ‘why not?’
US art critic Peter Schjeldahl 

“Damien Hirst is a brand, because the art form of the 21st century is marketing.” 
Germaine Greer 

“People are very funny, because they like buying things when they’re expensive. They don’t like buying things when they’re inexpensive. All of a sudden, they can buy the art for the same price as it was 15 years ago, but now they don’t want to do it.” 
Art collector Alberto Mugrabi on Damien Hirst’s work at auction 

“When the penny drops that these are not art, it's all going to collapse. Hirst should not be in the Tate. He's not an artist. What separates Michelangelo from Hirst is that Michelangelo was an artist and Hirst isn't."
Art Museum professional Julian Spalding in his book Con Art – Why You Ought To Sell Your Damien Hirsts While You Can 

“That’s not an art achievement, it’s a financial achievement.”
Art dealer Michael Findlay commenting on Hirst's multi million dollar auction in 2000 

“Art is about life and the art world’s about money” 
“We’re here for a good time, not a long time.” 
Artist Damien Hirst

Blow up

Here’s a mind puzzle for you. In 2003 Jeff Koons cast a set of inflatable monkeys in aluminium and painted them to look just like the originals (Monkeys (Chair) from the Popeye series). The three monkeys hung from the ceiling with the bottom of the three holding onto a chair that swung free of the floor. To look at the works you'd swear they were inflated plastic, to touch them (while the guard wasn’t looking) was to know they were metal. 

The other day in a gift store in Wellington we were surprised to see the same 'sculpture' displayed in the window only this time it was really made of inflated plastic monkeys, the same ones Koons used. If you want to make your own Monkeys (chair) go here (chair not included).

Images: Top left, available inflatable monkeys, right, Koons Monkeys (chair) and bottom, the Wellington version

When Ron and Larry got unmarried

The world of art dealers and their clients is not often thrown open as it has been in the recent flurry of suits in the New York Supreme Court, so let's make the most of it. Larry Gagosian and long-time collector and client billionaire Ron Perelman are about to duke it out over a Jeff Koons sculpture that isn’t even finished. The depositions have been filled and contain encouraging phrases like “clouding the title”. 

The pending cases also demonstrate the immense power mega-artists like Koons wield over their market. Essentially Koons had a deal with Gagosian over his yet-to-be-completed $US4 million granite sculpture of Popeye that if it was on-sold at any time in the future he (Koons) would get 70 percent of anything above the original sale price. It’s the artist’s resale fee on steroids. And just in case anyone thought there would be some wriggle room, Koons also insisted on 80 percent of any resale profit should the sculpture come back into Gagosian’s hands before it was completed. That’s a seriously powerful player at work. 

Welcome to the world of dealer/artist/collector relations where collectors not only purchase works from art dealers but also consign them back for resale, exchange them for other works and sell back direct. Tons of room for confusion and misunderstanding there. As one US attorney put it, “There’s a certain level of informality in the art market that is not helpful to any of the parties.” 

The court papers filed by Ron Perelman (you can get them here) claim that as the already paid for Popeye sculpture was running seven months late, it was decided to add it to some other art works as part payment for yet another, grander acquisition. All the pieces went back and forward with Larry Gagosian receiving the returned Perelman’s works and Perelman getting his new painting. 

Then all hell broke loose as Perelman claimed Gagosian “Fraudulantly induced [Perelman] to purchase Popeye a sculpture by Jeff Koons and forced [him] to accept an exchange rate significantly below its fair market value”. Gagosian responded in kind accusing Perelman of engaging in “a series of sham settlements and deceptive maneuvers”. 

Put simply, Larry reckoned that Ron hadn’t paid for Popeye so obviously he wasn't going to get the full price back for it but Perelman found out about Jeff's 70 percent so he figured that Larry wasn’t going to offer him very much at all because he wasn’t going to make any profit so Ron decided to sue which really really upset Larry who thought Ron was a friend and anyway he hadn’t ever sued one of his clients before but what the hell you have to make a start somewhere besides so far as Larry was concerned Ron didn’t even own the damn Popeye work because he hadn’t paid for it duh not that Ron was having anything to do with that as an idea because he had copies of his cheques. It’s complicated. 

You can read the whole amazing story here in the Huffington Post and in even more juicy detail here via Bloomberg. 

Image: Jeff Kons's Granite Popeye (simulation only)