Jeff Koons: Art or Smut?

It's been over twenty years since former Art Institute of Chicago student Jeff Koons unveiled his Made in Heaven exhibit in Europe. This infamous collection of work contained sculptures and paintings of the artist engaging in graphic sex with his then porn-star wife. The paintings range from spread-eagle images of his wife to images of sieman dripping from Koons' penis into her mouth. None of the paintings mentioned are actually done with paint but rather, like magazine centerfolds pasted onto canvases. Under medias used it reads: ink and canvas. This leads the discussion to, is this art? And to expand the idea to the bigger argument, what is art?

To compare Koons to Warhol is an insult to Warhol, what Wahol may have lacked in substance he made up for in vivid color, technique, irony and staying-power. This is not to say Jeff Koons is not memorable but is it memorable for the wrong reasons? This emperor has no clothes, quite literally. His work seems to cater to the shallow, American 1980s. His pieces are hardly artful and so tasteless this publication will not reproduce their image. Nudity and sexuality are not the problem in Koons work, it’s the clear lack of technique. Not only does it lack technique but its content is just ridiculous, it's like an X-rated Lisa Frank folder. If art is supposed to mirror life then what kind of life are these pieces mirroring? A late 1980s coke binge? A vintage porno? Or an extremely self-inflated artist.

The artist himself claims there is no hidden meaning behind his work and yet the pieces sold for an alarming amount of money. This all leads back to the question, what is art? Is it art if someone pays millions for "ink on canvas" (even if they can buy essentially the same thing at any newstand for about ten dollars) Is it art because someone else did it instead of you? Perhaps Koons is the only one who can honestly say what his paintings in this series mean but to the ordinary-joe it's simply pornography.

Blaze Starr in her Living Room

It used to be that you had to go to the circus to gawk at the freaks but Diane Arbus brings absurdity right to your coffee table. Her iconic photograph, Blaze Starr in her Living Room depicts a former stripper dancing modestly in her living room with a small dog. The essence of 60s interior design is captured effortlessly in the background from the carpet to the furniture, making it a riveting artifact.

Arbus' strongest asset as a photographer is her ability to capture the most natural expression of her subjects. Blaze Starr's face is exactly how it would be while she performed and her dance is frozen in an alluring pose. Even the puppy's giddy imitation is caught perfectly. Arbus' subject is photographed so honestly that one has to wonder whether the photographer is exploiting her characters or celebrating them.

To speak technically, Arbus' black and white photographs are just the right balance of light and dark, full of contrast and light. No detail of this shot is faded into obscurity. Arbus treats even the smallest details of Blaze Starr's living room with care, showing that Arbus was a master of the medium format film. The angle this photo is shot at is extremely inviting, the carpet draws your eye right up the ample leg of the subject almost to the point that you want to add a cymbal crash when your eyes meet the face.

It's hard to choose just one photo from her anthology Revelations because each one is completely unique. All of the images in this book have her signature style and voice. It's a difficult thing for a photographer to give voice to their images without words but Arbus has a way of frankly presenting subjects that make you think and add the voice yourself. Perhaps if the details of Arbus' tragic suicide were not known, we wouldn't see the melancholy in her photographs. The playful spirit of Arbus is quite evident in Blaze Starr in Her Living Room showing that the artist only wanted to engage with the fascinating individuals she met in her life.

Possibly True?

Black Dogs is a novel-in-stories by Jason Buhrmester. The story is told in the first person by a character named Patrick who's goal in life is to steal the cash Led Zeppelin is paid in advance. For Rock enthusiasts, this book is an ambitious recreation of true events surrounding the $203,000 mysteriously stolen from Led Zeppelin. Patrick's adventures include degenerate friends from his hometown of Baltimore who are in and out of jail as well as a gang of older, born again motorcyclists. The continued title of this book is The Possibly True Story of Classic Rock's Greatest Robbery, this idea of possibly true seems to be a continued thread used by Buhrmester in his telling.

The truest thing readers are left with is that Buhrmester struggles to develop realistic characters. For a novel that is told through a first person narrator, Patrick is hardly given any physical description until he is going to the court house at the end, readers barely know anything about him until he begins to explain his homelife and even that is plagued by clichés. What the author lacks in character development he supplements with cliches. All the "thug" characters such as Backwoods Billy, Danny, Boogie and Manicini are TV-show villains with only two things in mind, kicking ass and getting money. Farfetched incidences such as the D.A. asking him for percocet in the hospital only serve to make the characters inauthentic because through writing situations so unrealistic it's hard to give any credibility to characters. Buhrmester's tales seem impossible because they are relayed without any logistic detail. His characters are developed as stereotypes: one dimensional, dumb, robbers. Buhrmester's overall plot seems too sophisticated for them, rendering the book unbelievable. The overuse of cliches in this novel moves to the point of offensive when the author tries to develop female characters, showing how little he knows about women.

Several forms are being used in this book, some better than others. The use of the how-to form at the top of Electric Funeral is pleasing to readers and quite functional. Buhrmester's dialogue is the form that seems to trip him up, contributing to the overall demise of character development. The dialogue is particularly unpleasant in the character of Emily, there's a line near the beginning of the book where she says, "Which part? The part when you and Alex robbed my best friend's house or the part when you stood me up on New Year's Eve and left town without ever talking to me again?" which causes the reader to wonder what woman would actually say that? In less than five pages Patrick and Emily are making out. Are women really that easy? Again she is shown shouting, "Are you listening to me?" when Patrick is in the hospital. She is so undynamic and such a horrible stereotype of a nagging girlfriend that it borders on chauvinism. Another issue with the dialogue is that no character has any specific speech pattern or distinction of voice.

If you can't remember this book is set in the 70s, every page will remind you. Buhrmester clogs his prose with awkwardly placed pop culture references that distract rather than thicken. It comes off as forced, as if he has to remind himself what era it takes place in. He also keeps reminding you of his character's devotion to Black Sabbath in a nauseating line, "-worst of all he hated Black Sabbath." And again later on when Patrick is pontificating about The Doors, "I always liked The Doors- You either loved or hated The Doors. I loved them." No kidding. Another insultingly repititious line occurs when the goons eventually find the Led Zepp cash. They are shouting out inaccurate estimations of how much cash it is until they count it up to $203,000, "We were both wrong." Again, no kidding.

If you're the guy who thinks he knows everything about 70s rock music than this is the book for you. It's like listening to that popular burn-out in high school spin you an afternoon's worth of bullshit under the secondary title of Possibly True. Every chapter is too cleanly summed up like an after-school special leaving the reader thinking, no way. Buhrmester's prose reads as awkwardly as the teen years being described and it's fairly obvious in his underdeveloped characters and overdeveloped plot that this is a first novel, lacking subtleties of voice and style. This is a quick, easy read and it's unfortunate the author muddled up almost every line with the word fuck because this book could be a great Young Adult title, as adults won't find much nuance here.