HIGH CONCEPT

Tulip 'balloons' by Jeff Koons, permanently installed outside Guggenheim museum Bilbaohttp://www.guggenheim-bilbao.es/uploads/area_prensa/dossieres/en/doss_tulips_en.pdf (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently went to the Jeff Koons exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  For those of you who don’t know who Koons is, he is a conceptual artist.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, conceptual artists do things like create “sculptures” that consist of household items. If the artist is really good, the sculptures consist of used household items.  These are called “garbage” by non-artists and “statements” by artists.
  
According to the exhibit, Koons started his career with an installation consisting of plexiglass boxes containing vaccum cleaners affixed to a wall.  Since Koons was not yet a great artist, the vaccum cleaners were new, not used -- so they were still just “sculptures,” and not yet “statements.” Along with the vaccum cleaners was a lighted sign stating “New.” The Whitney's breathless wall inscription stated that the exhibit “proved so effective that some passersby inquired if the machines were for sale.” On reading that, I figured the owner of JC Penny is an even better artist than Koons, because he would have known to add a sign saying “30% off.”  On further reflection, however, I realized that both Koons and JC Penny were one up on me because at least they knew what a vacuum cleaner was.

 As I continued at the exhibit, another breathless wall inscription stated that, in this exhibition, Koons “adopted strategies of a commercial product launch to unveil his new work in several large cities, which he publicized in a glossy ad campaign.  In so doing, Koontz seized on the increasing role of advertising and celebrity in the art world” -- and successfully advertised his exhibit and became a celebrity in the art world.  Crafty, eh?  But didn’t that still mean that the owner of JC Penny was a better artist than Koons?

I read a final wall inscription of a Koons exhibit featuring, among other things, a large ape figure called “HulkElvis.”  The inscription stated that Koons had brilliantly created technologies to “blur the distinction between real things and their copies.” This time, I thought the makers of those knock-off prada bags, rather than JC Penny, had Koons beat.  

However, in the interest of full disclosure,  as I struggled to copy the inscription I was about to mock by hand, I realized that I had not even been able to master the technology of smart phones, or I could have just snapped a picture of it.  So what I came away with from the exhibit was that, given my lack of experience with housework, sales and technology, I was never going to be a conceptual artist, clothing chain owner or maker of illegal knock-offs of anything. Plus, I was out twenty bucks. Now there’s a concept.

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• Loons for Koons
• Material Boy: Jeff Koons at the Whitney