-- A shiny stainless steel sculpture created by Jeff Koons in 1986, inspired by a child’s inflatable toy, sold at Christie’s on Wednesday night for $91.1 million with fees, breaking the record at auction for a work by a living artist.... (may 15, new york times)
Jeff Koons’ rabbit is an obscenity. Not obscene like young folks earning a couple of dollars fucking for a camera, really seriously obscene like lives twisted and robbed of meaning, systematic rapes and mass degradations, environmental genocides for profit, and all such human misery condensed and represented by this little chrome lump. Maybe you’ve never thought about where all that putrid money comes from, but part of it is out of your own pocket, a daylight robbery that also degrades your senses and very conception of self.
-- As a symbol of American excess, Koons’ Rabbit becomes somehow more poetic through its $91 million purchase. If beauty is relative, and if the value of art is relative, then so is its price. The most important thing to remember about the extravagantly priced Rabbit is that the money doesn’t mean it’s good. It just makes it a billionaire's conversation piece. (wash examiner)
This art, ironically, reflects just who they are, the oligarchs and hereditary barons of our capitalistic, nominally democratic, social system, and it isn’t pretty -- petty, stupid, and vile would be closer. To be graphically clear, this rendering of a mass-produced, throw-away novelty typically found at a carnival as the culture’s highest artistic expression, valued at ninety one million dollars, is really all that can be expected from drug dealers, gun runners, and dynastic freeloaders.
-- For decades, “it was understood that you don’t challenge people on how they make their money, how they pay their taxes (or don’t), what continuing deeds they may be engaged in—so long as they ‘give back.’” Now, there are signs this compact may be cracking. (new york times) quoted in Artnews online
By ‘give back,’ of course, they mean spread the loot around, making sure tax-supported institutions have a taste, and since donations beget write-offs, everyone's happy and satisfied as the tax burden crashes down on little people. Does anyone really think this factory-made monopoly-token bunny is really worth more than a few hundred dollars? It looks too cheap and throw-away disposable to put in the garden, but in a three year old’s room, maybe. The international ultra-wealthy have reduced visual art to this deadpan idiocy, astronomically unattainable and yet not worth having, effectively isolating thoughtful citizens who are unable to find each other with and through the medium of visual art.
Clumsy at first, a grass roots resentment, naive and reactionary in its earliest expression, will mature into a planet-wide reckoning with this untitled royal cabal, the financial overlords bleeding our planet and robbing our future. A sign that common citizens are beginning to find themselves, and relate to each other, will be when art seen in local galleries, and in the homes of friends and family, changes to viewer-friendly, sense-verifying, and locally sourced, created by artists living the same life as their neighbors.
Jeff Koons’ rabbit is an obscenity. Not obscene like young folks earning a couple of dollars fucking for a camera, really seriously obscene like lives twisted and robbed of meaning, systematic rapes and mass degradations, environmental genocides for profit, and all such human misery condensed and represented by this little chrome lump. Maybe you’ve never thought about where all that putrid money comes from, but part of it is out of your own pocket, a daylight robbery that also degrades your senses and very conception of self.
-- As a symbol of American excess, Koons’ Rabbit becomes somehow more poetic through its $91 million purchase. If beauty is relative, and if the value of art is relative, then so is its price. The most important thing to remember about the extravagantly priced Rabbit is that the money doesn’t mean it’s good. It just makes it a billionaire's conversation piece. (wash examiner)
This art, ironically, reflects just who they are, the oligarchs and hereditary barons of our capitalistic, nominally democratic, social system, and it isn’t pretty -- petty, stupid, and vile would be closer. To be graphically clear, this rendering of a mass-produced, throw-away novelty typically found at a carnival as the culture’s highest artistic expression, valued at ninety one million dollars, is really all that can be expected from drug dealers, gun runners, and dynastic freeloaders.
-- For decades, “it was understood that you don’t challenge people on how they make their money, how they pay their taxes (or don’t), what continuing deeds they may be engaged in—so long as they ‘give back.’” Now, there are signs this compact may be cracking. (new york times) quoted in Artnews online
By ‘give back,’ of course, they mean spread the loot around, making sure tax-supported institutions have a taste, and since donations beget write-offs, everyone's happy and satisfied as the tax burden crashes down on little people. Does anyone really think this factory-made monopoly-token bunny is really worth more than a few hundred dollars? It looks too cheap and throw-away disposable to put in the garden, but in a three year old’s room, maybe. The international ultra-wealthy have reduced visual art to this deadpan idiocy, astronomically unattainable and yet not worth having, effectively isolating thoughtful citizens who are unable to find each other with and through the medium of visual art.
Clumsy at first, a grass roots resentment, naive and reactionary in its earliest expression, will mature into a planet-wide reckoning with this untitled royal cabal, the financial overlords bleeding our planet and robbing our future. A sign that common citizens are beginning to find themselves, and relate to each other, will be when art seen in local galleries, and in the homes of friends and family, changes to viewer-friendly, sense-verifying, and locally sourced, created by artists living the same life as their neighbors.
