 Koons's inflatable lobster, enigmatically titled "Lobster". Pic: Benoit Tessier
September 11, 2008 8:32 AM
VERSAILLES, France - King Louis XIV was a visionary patron of the arts but he could never have imagined an inflatable lobster, a porcelain statue of Michael Jackson or a giant balloon dog gracing his beloved Versailles palace.
That''s because he, unlike the kind of people who buy Jeff Koons's work, wasn't a wanker.
Gallery - the madness of Jeff Koons
The US artist has set auction records with two sculptures selling for over $23 million apiece - one, a giant flower made from shiny balloons and the other, a, well, giant heart that looks like it was made from shiny balloons.
Yesterday, the gifted balloon-bending clown
presented 17 of his works from the past two decades
in the gilded chambers of the Sun King's chateau.
"It's the proudest moment of my life," Koons, 53, told
reporters as workers finished nailing every plastic dog
poo and billion-dollar trio of giant flying geese into place.
Which is fair enough. If there's one thing the world's
not in desperately short supply of, it's the kind of
cretinous goons who think paying $30 million for a
codpiece made of buttons and clingfilm is pretty good
value as long as it gains them the sort of attention
that was desperately missing from their childhood.
Koons deserves to give himself a big, hearty slap on
the back for capitalising on that market.
Oh, hang on. He has.
In one room, Koons has decided a white marble bust
of himself is best placed in between the most iconic
portrait of the mature Louis XIV in his royal robes and
an equally famous painting of the Sun King's doomed
descendant Louis XVI, who was executed in 1793.
"It didn't have to do with my own ego," Koons said of
the choice of setting, describing his intention as "playful".
The show is the biggest contemporary art exhibition at
Versailles, and has caused a huge media stir in France,
where sensible people live.
Newspapers have dubbed Koons "the king of kitsch"
and some critics have wondered if maybe his clumsy,
childlike creations don't really sit comfortably alongside
masterpieces commissioned by kings of France in the
17th and 18th centuries.
"My first thought when I walked in was wow, 'that's
really out of place'," said Gary Furr, a US tourist, gazing
at Balloon Dog (Magenta), a huge gleaming pink poodle,
which faces a painting by Italian Renaissance master
Veronese.
Outside the chateau, a small group staged a brief
protest to say Koons' works would be better suited to
Disneyland, but not entirely surprisingly, Australian
tourist Vicky Jones disagreed.
"I thought they were beautiful. They really enhanced the
setting," she said.
Yes Vicky. In much the same way that a giant, turdlike
plaster potato enhances the serene highland setting of
the rural Australian town of Robertson.
Among the more incongruous (read "awkward to have
to write about this is some kind of serious tone") sights
of the show is a lifesize porcelain statue entitled Michael
Jackson and Bubbles, showing the King of Pop and a
monkey, which is set in front of a marble statue of Louis
XIV dressed as a Roman emperor.
Oh, how Louis would have laughed at the irony of it all.
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