Jeff Koons is an artist, a provacateur, an ego. He is not a curator. To see evidence of this one must only see his new exhibit consuming four floors of the New Museum. His contemporary artistic style of in-your-face, shock and awe tactics are superfluous, confusing and equivalent to an atomic bomb in terms of the visual barrage one must endure in order to make it through this whole exhibit. His seemingly sporadic placement was made all the worse by the significant lack of information provided. This is the least accessible and most intangible exhibit I have seen in my 22 years on this Earth - and having studying art history for at least 5 years of my life, I can only imagine what a nightmare this must be for first-time visitors and/or beginning art viewers. If Jeff Koons was trying to scare as many people away from contemporary art as possible I think he succeeded.
As the first US exhibit of the Athens-based Dakis Joannou Collection (one of the leading collections of contemporary art in the world with more than 1,500 works by 400 contemporary artists), one would expect a comprehensive, organized and well-informed curation in an attempt to accurately represent the ethos of the collection while still adhering to the New Museum mission statement. Established in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, the New Museum is a "leading destination for new art and new ideas. It is Manhattan's only dedicated contemporary art museum and is respected internationally for the adventurousness and global scope of its curatorial program." I guess you could call Skin Fruit, the amazingly unfortunate name for this clamjamfry, "adventurous", but it's the type of adventurousness that many associate with craziness. Or a death wish. Speaking of death, the seven marble corpses with the addition of the roaming security guard's haunting and repetitive truisms did genuinely interest me: "This is propaganda, you know, you know. This is propaganda, you know, you know. This is propaganda. 2001." And you'll never guess who's art inspired Dakis Joannou to collect in the first place?
Labels:
Dakis Joannou,
Jeff Koons,
Marcia Tucker,
New Museum,
Skin Fruit
Propaganda indeed.
- Madeleine LePere
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