Baudrillard on Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons: impossible to know whether he is stupid or not, whether he can distinguish the kitsch from the original, the true from the false. He is pure simulacrum, steeped in a total innocence, either ironic or ‘zero degree.’ Beneath an angelic, infantile, exterior, he is the disenchanted verification, the icy self-evidence of a world of empty signs. Whereas there is, in Warhol, all the charm of simulation—and, above all, the intuitive sense of what it has always been: namely, nothing more than a hypothesis—with Jeff Koons we are at the burlesque stage of simulation as joke or as stereotype. All the same, the simulacrum hypothesis deserved better than to become a reality.

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The Infinity Rooms of Yayoi Kusama

I don’t blog about visual art very often on this site. After a few years of following the visual art world in Chicago, both as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and after, I became increasingly bored by new work.

It’s no small secret that the visual art world today is experiencing an existential crisis. How do painters, collage artists, photographers, etc. compete in a world where every consumer has a digital camera, a camera phone, a video camera, and an HD TV.

In my dalliance with the visual community I find most often that original work is that done by those who either 1) are outside of the art world—not “outsider artists” but more those who just don’t care what others are doing or 2) those who are somewhat crazy in their own rite.

In the case of Yayoi Kusama, both situations seem to apply.

From a respective of her work, spanning more than forty years now, I am drawn to her “infinity rooms.” She has been working on these ideas since the 1960’s, and the latest incarnations of her work seem to achieve an experience that I seek in visual art—mainly a grasp of the infinite.

Her rooms capture the grandeur of the cosmos in which we live on a micro scale. I’ve posted a few images of her here, but to really get a sense of her work you should check out this panoramic photograph of her work Fireflies on the Water by clicking here.

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Artropolis Chicago

One of the experiences I will miss most about Chicago is the spectacular range of culture that can be found here. This weekend, the husband and I spent the better part of a day at Artropolis , an annual art fair featuring galleries from around the world.

It seems there are three types of people who attend these sorts of show, and museums and galleries in general:

1) The “Tourist.” You know the type, they bring their children to a crowded gallery show, endlessly bumping into you and stopping traffic to take photographs of art before moving on to the next name they recognize from some otherwise forgotten textbook they once owned. These people seem to have a mental checklist, and “seeing” art means being able to say they were in the same room as a piece of work. They make the mental check on their list, take a snapshot, and walk away.

2) The “Serious” Art Collector. Chance are, you have never talked to these people because they have too much money and taste to be bothered with you. How can those with the resources to traffic in great works of aesthetic beauty show such little tolerance or understanding of humanity? I think of this crowd as “Tourists with Money.”

3) The “Lovers.” By far the smallest crowd, we take time with work, engaging it carefully. You’ll notice how our hands reach out to almost touch a fine piece of work, before we break our spells and respectfully suppress the inclination. You know us because we have little interest in pop art and most video work, choosing instead to sit with the masters and the unknowns, delighted, engaged, and willfully trying to see the world through a different lens.

There was some amazing work at Artropolis this year, and the show is so expansive and dense that it is presumptuous for anyone to compile a “best of” list based on one visit. Instead, here are a few of my favorites:

Hung Liu