Koons Ready-Made Exhibits

Jeff Koons

“Art is a vehicle of acceptance, first you accept yourself, and eventually the highest state, is the acceptance of others,” Jeff Koons said.  Working with his team of about 130 people, he creates ready-mades (ordinary manufactured objects) and his team paints precise bright colors on aluminum and stainless steel materials.  While Koons, an American commodity artist continually works on a handful of old and new projects referencing Minimalism and Pop Art.  His noticeable objects are rendered for the public in New York City and exhibits at the Palace of Versailles.  He grabs the attention of the public with his over-sized ready-mades, like Duchamp did, in creating shock value and controversy to his spectators. He believes that people must interact with art to fully experience the art he creates, so that’s why he puts these over-sized works of art out for societies acceptance.  When you see Koons’ art, you’ll be able to identify his mass production work and unique style in a variety of forms.

Tulips, Jeff Koons

Puppy, Jeff Koons

 An example of Koons unique style, Tulips, a mass-produced bouquet of multicolor balloon flowers, which lays about 2 meters tall and 5 meters across with mirroring surfaces.  This stainless steel bouquet was part of the “Celebration” series by Koons in 1994, which included Rabbit (1986), and Balloon Dog (Blue) (1994).  These industrial-looking objects are made from stainless steel and similar to Minimalism materials used to create projects, like Judd’s Untitled, where Koons intention is to create an environment of parties and holidays.  However, Puppy (1992), a massive 18-century floral arrangement sculpture standing 12 meters tall bringing aesthetics to the present using computer modeling.  Once all of the objects are put together, the spectator feels part of a parade with the object resembling inflatables and the public becomes part of the party.

Sandwiches, Jeff Koons

In Koons exhibit, “Easyfun-Etheral,” he features food, fashion, and fun; artists like Dali, Pollock, and Rosenquist influence him, in paintings such as Sandwiches and Lips.  In Sandwiches, Koons refers to a 1963 Chevy Impala, animated deli meats, and moustache imagery of Dali’s artwork where splashes of milk Koons’ is influenced by Pollock’s abstractions.  In addition, the collage of imagery on canvas notices the billboard-style painting of Rosenquist, which all the techniques tie in with Pop Art culture.  Similar to Koons’ Sandwiches painting, Lips is an image fantasy dream-scape of lips, an eye, and eyelashes, which also see in Dali’s surreal paintings.  Koons depicts gravity-defying forms of pleasure with present computer manipulations and splashes of juice also reference Pollock’s abstractions.

Lips, Jeff Koons

Today, with over 150 achievements, Koons forces us to expand our imagination to the next level with his diverse style and industrial models.  Continuing to inspire the public and celebrities with his unique sense of style, he will continue to exhibit more objects as he calls for acceptance from all over the world.  Since we respond to art differently, Koons explains to Vanity Fair, “…the concept that when a painter paints a painting or a sculptor makes a sculpture it is not complete unless a beholder, a viewer, responds to it.”  Since other artists have a connection the their art, it’s important that the spectator feels and senses the emotion, which I believe Koons’ does a great job grabbing the views attention.

Balloon Dog (Blue), Jeff Koons

Rabbit, Jeff Koons

Basquiat's Wild Imagination

An African-American graffiti artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat urbanized Neo-Expressionism in New York City using crayons and chalk as mediums, his child-like stick figures, cryptic messages, and pictographs to endorse his signature “SAMO.”  Basquiat website quotes him saying, “Believe it or not, I can actually draw,” which drew the attention of a broad audience during the mid-1980’s.  In addition, Pop artist Andy Warhol became a support to Basquiat’s artwork and together they created paintings that made Basquiat noticeable.  In collaboration, Basquiat and Warhol began a series of paintings, which Warhol starts the painting allowing Basquiat to layer the painting with lines and words.  Basquiat’s wild imagination of text and iconology, he demonstrated emotional and cultural battles in the African-American society, and through Western and Pop art history.

Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper), Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol

An example of Basquiat’s collaborations with Warhol, Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper), a recreation of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, which Christ’s image is the focal point of the motif.  This sculptural installation of acrylic paint and punching bags symbolize the negative criticism that both artists were dealing with at this time.  Warhol’s boxing sessions with Basquiat, which Basquiat was a fan of professional boxing, reveals a time when Basquiat painted a portrait of his dealer.  In The Andy Warhol Diaries, Warhol says, “paintings we’re doing together are better when you can’t tell who did which parts,” which makes the installation almost seem as if it were painted by one artist, and even their struggles.

With Basquiat’s usage of words and symbolism, he creates four wooden panels into Grillo, Spanish for cricket, which is a photocopy collage of oils, acrylics, oilstick and nails on wood.  This painting references race, power and wealth, and human rights as a part of sugar plantations, combat, and colonization, which the skeletal figures are no exemption to the painting.  The Nkisi figures are represented to swear oath among their tribes.  The black-nailed crown figure in the Hemba culture (left) carries superstition of magic stored in their bodies.  For the Caribbean culture, the yellow-halo crown figure (right) portrays dominance in this culture by the torch and fist, which Basquiat is influenced by his Haitian/Puerto Rican parents’ roots.  In the term, griot, which means “poet and historian”, best describes his artwork.

Grillo, Jean-Michel Basquiat

In Basquiat earlier painting career, the “Untitled” paintings, includes Untitled (Head) or misinterpreted as (Skull), he quickly completes expressive characteristics of a large head and finishes it later because of unexpected image he created.  In Untitled (Head), it’s a representation of facial features, like X-ray vision, which looks the part of Abstract Expressionism era.  Through emotion, the artist frees themselves of memory, association, and nostalgia.  However, Skull is misinterpreted by the way the subject is portrayed inanimate from the artist intention.  It’s all through the relationship of emotion and the physical appearance that surfaces on canvas while the artist is painting.

Untitled (Skull), Jean-Michel Basquiat

In 1986, Basquiat’s became largely known later on in his career, showing his artwork in exhibitions and making front-page news.  When Andy Warhol died, Basquiat became isolated from the world and it affected his relationships.  Consequently, his depression from Warhol's death made his heroine addiction spiral out of control, and he died from an overdose on August 12, 1988 at the age of 27.  He truly was an artistic success during the time of Neo-Expressionism and he literally put his soul into his artwork.

Rosenquist's American Images

With James Rosenquist’s large billboards and fragmented montages, it’s hard for any spectator to overlook his works of art.  Some examples of his works consist of famous icons, like John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, to American society and Pop culture.  In addition, he captures Vietnam War in his artwork as well; awareness from what he saw during that time.  Since he doesn’t consider himself a Pop artist, with traditional comic strips and dots, instead he overlaps images with wild colors and a wide variety of mediums.

When Rosenquist started in Abstract Expressionism in the 1950’s, he later became part of the Pop Art culture with artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Claes Oldenburg.  During the early part of his career, creating huge billboards wasn’t considered art.  Once he brought down the billboards to small canvases, his work was noticeable to critics, spectators, and curators.  Throughout his artistic career, he went on to become one of the notable members of Pop Art.

 

 

In one of his best works, F-111, he expresses a sense of fear during the nuclear threats of the war.  The billboard is 10 feet high and 86 feet long and depicts a F-111 military aircraft, spanning the entire length, with 51 panels of overlapping images. He created this piece on canvas with aluminum and oils of a girl getting her hair done, cake, spaghetti, and a nuclear cloud. It was a sensation during the contemporary Pop Art era and went for $60,000 in 1965. Its location sits the front room of the Leo Castelli Gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and Rosenquist explained to American Visions: “I thought of this new war device that’s a defense economy item, supporting aircraft workers, each with two-and-a-half statistical children in Texas or New England or wherever. And I thought that being an artist was insignificant.”

Another political work of art, Campaign 1965, is painted and a lithograph, a print made from stone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. In the lithograph, a saltshaker sprinkling a dove’s tail, and the wallpaper in the background is fruit salad of a military man’s chest that Rosenquist hoped to show peace from the war.  In addition, the Kleenex boxes represent consumer products and used combinations of airbrushing, wallpaper rollers, stencils, and color-separation process as a medium.  A publisher, Tatyana Grosman, founder of Universal Limited Art Editions, helped create this piece during Rosenquist’s 23 day stay at ULAE in New York.  Since Rosenquist opposed war and later was arrested for being a protestor, the public throwing tomatoes at it destroyed the painting.

Rosenquist grabs the American societies attention and his works made him a success in the Pop Art world.  Furthermore, he became a true American artist by documenting what he saw was important to American history.  The popular images he used in his large-scale artwork, he wanted the people of the states to realize what’s happening outside their window and to view art as a progression of actual events during the war and Pop Art era.