Jeff Koons, the most controversial but also the most intriguing contemporary artist, has taken over the MUCEM in Marseille to create a dialogue between his emblematic works and the popular art collections preserved in the walls of fibreglass blocks designed by the architect Rudy Ricciotti. What a carte blanche for the artist, who looks a bit like the marriage of a dog and a lobster. What a conversation one could imagine between some twenty works that marked the artist’s flamboyant career, including 19 from the Pinault collection and loaned for the occasion, and everyday objects, witnesses of the history of popular lifestyles, belonging to the MUCEM’s ethnographic heritage inherited from the former Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions of Paris?
Art in the object
It is certainly possible to read in this stripped-down juxtaposition the brilliance of the object’s reign, a stupefying trajectory that ranges from its strictly functional utility to its commodification driven to the irrational speculation of reality, against the backdrop of the aestheticization of the gadget and of emptiness. For Jeff Joons, «Everything can be transformed into art,» and although his creations are described as «kitsch,» the artist replies that «The term “kitsch” is a matter of intent. Its pejorative connotations are used by those who use art as a form of segregation. I do not believe in kitsch because I do not believe in exclusion. Art has the vocation to encourage universal, transcendent acceptance, starting with the acceptance of oneself.». The artist, the son of an interior decorator and furniture dealer, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago before working as a ticket clerk at MoMA NYC and then as a sales representative for investment funds. Since his early days in the art world, he has pursued a creative approach. «anti-criticism and anti-judgment».
A major exhibition
Nearly 300 pieces have been selected to highlight the symbolic resonances between the kitschy neo-pop creations of Mickey the Angel and authentic displays of popular objects, many of which originate from the world of the circus, which is very present in the collections of the MUCEM. Balloon Dog, Lobster, Hanging Heart, as well as more recent paintings, have been installed according to a scenography conceived by the architect Pascal Robriguez and meticulously supervised by an artist with an obsessive precision. A staging that creates different atmospheres in each of the exhibition rooms, with light effects and mirrors. The free associations arranged by the neo-pop artist are presented to the viewer without any specific reading keys, leaving each of them free to create their own narrative. The Travel Bar, a casting by Jeff Koons (1986), is surrounded by Sarreguemines pebbles and traditional artisan glass. This Travel Bar is part of the Luxury and Degradation series. The Travel Bar, a luxury gadget, was created based on the one that its parents owned, a symbol of social ascension and success.
For this exhibition, the work was staged in one of the rooms of the MUCEM, in the foreground of the depth of field of a view of the sea sublimated by the lines of Rudy Ricciotti, who designed the MUCEM not in an imperialist manner but in the style of the fissure, the fault, those cracks that allow light to filter through, a building «of water, stone and wind» which, thanks to the carved concrete lace of its details, offers a mosaic panorama of the nuances of the Mediterranean blue. What would Rudy Ricciotti think of the installations of Jeff Koons among these walls shaped like a Provençal madrigal, an ode to beauty? Architect with a mischievous tongue, Rudy Ricciotti never fails to denounce the impoverishment of aesthetics and the infantilization of cultural life.
«The architect has the responsibility to produce lasting beauty and dignity. Choosing beauty today is a commitment, a resistance. I fight against the failure of aesthetics. If I don’t have a definition of beauty, I know what ugliness is.». The architect claims a point of view on aesthetics that says something about our relationship with the world and engages the narrative of our time; it is resolutely part of a persistent and rebellious quest for beauty that emancipates. «It seems that we are too open to the field of generic mediocrity: we welcome it blindly., Rudy Ricciotti hammers home the point of postmodern mystification.
Jeff Koons, a controversial artist?
Would Jeff Koons be part of those artists who impose their infantile whims in place of effort and talent to deliver a work that, while lacking in sophistication, by the promise of a avant-garde that flatter a certain narcissism of the viewer, cuts the world between the daring and the hermetic?
Jeff Koons claims that art is accessible to everyone, as a return to innocent and playful pleasures: «The art world uses taste as a form of segregation. I try to do work that everyone can enjoy, that people from the simplest strata of society cannot imagine not being able to understand.». In the vein of a mischievous and provocative Warhol who posed «I started with commercial art; I want to end with an art business (…), being good at business is the most fascinating form of art», Jeff Koons plays with the ambiguity of financial art, considering art as a means of manipulation. « a privileged vector of merchandising ».
A leading figure in the Pinault collection, whose acquisitions have shaped a career that will make him the most successful living artist with a record of $91.1 million set in June 2019 during a Christie’s sale for a 1986 Rabbit. Jeff Koons is undoubtedly also the most controversial because his installations in places steeped in history have been met with outraged reactions. The controversy sparked by the Tulips offered to the city of Paris and presented on the Champs-Élysées in tribute to the victims of the November 2015 attacks had been intense. Philosopher Yves Michaud had published a pamphlet following the affair, titled This is not a Tulip. Cynicism or benevolence? The artist displays a disarming kindness in all circumstances. Jeff Koons brings together the paroxysms of our contemporary era and his work, exhibited at the MUCEM, offers us some masterful reflections on the anthropological changes that permeate and transform our civilization.
Jeff Koons MUCEM, works from the Pinault Collection, from May 19 to October 18, 2021.
The MUCEM was inaugurated on June 7, 2013. The new building, named mole J4 and designed by Rudy Ricciotti in collaboration with Roland Carta, is connected by a bridge to Fort St-Jean, which overlooks the old port of Marseille.
Works by Jeff Koons will also be on display this summer 2021 in Rennes, as part of the exhibition of a hundred pieces from the Pinault collection selected by the curator Jean-Jacques Aillagon. The exhibition, which offers an unprecedented journey through the works of 57 artists, will be held at the Couvent des Jacobins from Saturday, June 12, to Sunday, August 29. Entitled Beyond the color, The exhibition will have a theme of black and white.
