Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons is a contempory artist, one who uses vibrant colors and is known for recreating ordinary or simple objects, such as balloon animals. This balloon dog was created in 1994.

As many people view his artwork as revolutionary, and significant in art-history, others believe that his work is meaningless, and that Koons himself works very much on the idea of business savvy, much like Damien Hirst. Koon's works of art have a fixation on fame.  Art should make us feel and think more intelligently; however Koons himself has stated that his works have no hidden meaning. His arts do not make us reflect, they have no dimension or message behind them, they are not mysterious, nor intriguing. Koons creates his art as means of self-advertisement. His work is meant to be consumed by the tacky rich. Jeff Koon’s art is another justification of how market culture is riding art pieces of deep significance and uniqueness, making art a commodity.

The Last Sections of The Mona Lisa Curse

The hunger for new art has radically altered the way art is produced. Andy Warhol was the first artist to embrace this concept and he became very successful by mass producing his art so that it was readily available to the public. Everyone could own a piece of his artwork because there was such a stock pile of it. It has come to be understood that things have to be plentiful in order to market them and promote them. But the market has altered the meaning of art. The Mugrabi art collector family has made alot of art popular by purchasing it at auctions for very high prices. They support the artist and the art becomes popular. The Mugrabi family owns 800 Andy Warhol pieces. To me this seems like just a marketing scheme. The Mugrabis claim that they are purchasing the art for the benefit of the artist and to support the concept and the birth of new art, and to create interest in the artist; however, I just see it as a way to popularize something that would not be popular because its conceptually is not attractive to people. Most of the art that the Mugrabi art collectors own lacks meaning. They buy these pieces of art to jack up the worth of the artwork; to me the art loses value as it is branded with a price. Art should be interesting to people because it speaks to them not because it is "worth" millions. Art of the present time lacks meaning and purpose; it wants fame, it wants a high price tag.

The Tragedy of Famous Art

As we saw in the film we have been watching in class the past few classes, The Mona Lisa Curse narrated by Robert Hughes, is a tale of the decline of art as a visual and conceptual comodity to becoming a monetary comodity. Art has changed ever since the tour that the Mona Lisa took through the United States. Robert Hughes questions, " Is the authoritarian book on art these days a check book?". It seems that the more an artwork is worth at an auction, the more it becomes a celebrity in the art world, and the more commercialized it becomes. Often it is the doing of the museums that commercialize and drape art with monetary values. The survival of many museums are based on outside funding and if the museum does not popularize itself my advertising certain works of art it will crumble. I beleive it is the job of the museum to protect art and to preserve it's conceptual value. Works such as Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh have been so commercialized they are everywhere. There are postcards, shirts, and bedding with this image on it. This over exposure changes the meaning of the art and degrades it.

Mona Lisa Curse

When watching 'The Mona Lisa Curse' film, this work of art by Damien Hirst was shown, called "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", which is a tiger shark that was caught by an Australian and perserved in foremaldahyde. Hirst has gained status through what he has created, as his works are rather odd, focusing on the process of death in many of his peices. Robert Hughes, art critic who made the film, despises Damien Hirsts works such as this. I agree with him about this specific peice, that it is tacky and overrated. It is something that belongs in an aquarium or a science museum, but because it has been put in an art museum, people view it as art. In the film, Hughes makes a point that art has become a commodity, as it now belongs to the people who can afford it. The meaning of the art itself has become less important. The spectacle of certain art peices has escalated, diverging away from the true significance of the art.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg was a ground breaking American Artist starting out in the 50s. He created art that captivated American popculture throught the use of silk screening well-known images that both complimented and juxtaposed eachother. He created a history of the American culture with his artwork. I enjoy his work because it is intense, fresh, and talks to you. However, it is a shame how his art work was used, along with many other artists' work, for the Robert and Ethel Scull to make an enormouse profit off of the auction of thier imense collection of contemporary American art. Rauschenberg confronted the Sculls about thier unfair use of his art without awarding Rauschenberg some entitlement to some of the profits. Royalty legislation for artists in the resale of thier works was never passed in the House of Representatives and to this day artist do not recieve a portion of the profit from resale. This was the beginning of the age when art became more of a peice of the market in America than a peice of culture. Through out history art has sadly become more associated with money and auctions than with the artists and ideas these artists have.

Man in a Bubble

I recently found this when researching performance art. I think it says a lot about performance art itself.  Theres something intriguing about performance art. As performance art cannot be bought or sold, it is brought immediately to the public.  The artist is able to skip over the process of going to a broker and a gallery.  In my opinion, this makes the art more pure.  Also, no two performance art peices are the same, therefore enhancing the purity of the art.  Many artists do rather odd works of performance art, such as this one as the man is sitting naked in a plastic bubble in the middle of the city.  What is intriguing is that it still draws people in.  There is a fairly large crowd, even despite the pouring rain.

The shock of the familiar

Fred Wilson's art is not about creating art but situation objects in a way that evokes some emotion or a thought that was not present before if these objects were to be isolated. It is the positioning and placement of the objects that is key to his art. Placing something one way or contrasting it with another object brings something out that was not and could not be there before. He mostly works with things that are ordinary to us but become extraordinary once he has arranged them according to his vision. For example he takes these museum items and arranges them in a way that evokes certain biases or ideologies that were not obvious before. Specifically about the stereotypes and biases towards African American people.