Balloon flower - Jeff Koons
The Jeff Koons exhibition in the Chateau de Versailles illustrates how important the process of curation is in the reception of art. Curation is a relatively recent discipline, at least in our shared consciousness. It can be defined as the process of selecting and organizing artwork in order to further knowledge. A curator is thus an agent taking part in the cultural assimilation of art. He is a kind of “culturepreneur” who organizes art collections, exhibitions or festivals; explaining his approach through articles, books and conventions. His work influences what will be culturally remembered, how it will be perceived and classified.
The Jeff Koons exhibition shows a special kind of curation, the artist was heavily involved in the selection of his own work. It is difficult to know exactly who did what in this curatorial process because of the idolatry surrounding the Jeff Koons superstar. The exhibition is an enormous marketing machine designed to attract international visitors to Versailles. By watching the opening press conference (in French), someone might think that Jeff Koons genially did everything by himself. But if I look at the official website, the names of Elena Geuna and Laurent Le Bon appear as curators. Anyhow, you can feel a very artistic approach to the curation. It is powerful, experimental and generator of meaning. There is a real dialogue between the exhibited artwork and its historical environment.
Hoover installation in front of Marie Antoinette’s painting
I would like to take the example of the Hoover installation in front of Marie Antoinette’s painting. I’m not sure about the artist’s view that hoovers represent uteruses. But I was stroke by the symbolic confrontation. Marie Antoinette and hoovers are two symbols of the history of women. One is grandiose and powerful, the other one is functional and enslaving. But then comes questions, are they really that different? Was not Marie Antoinette also imprisoned in a wife’s role? Are they not two symbols of a certain cocooning? And obviously, there is this contrast between the rich Versailles and the mass market hoovers. Both symbols here are equally represented, face to face.
Michael Jackson's statue
The previous example is confrontational but I was also impressed by how some artworks integrated their environment. I had to look twice to notice the Jeff Koons flower vase. It seemed to have been made for the baroque Queen’s room. The work of Jeff Koons gave also back some lightness to the historical site. Now that Versailles is an institution, it is easy to forget it was initially a place devoted to the craziest caprices of its occupants. Michael Jackson’s statue revives this reality of Versailles and has thus its place in the Venus salon.
So yes, the Jeff Koons exhibition is a megalomaniac marketing campaign around the artist’s personality. But that doesn’t stop the venture to be meaningful. It was very risky for the curators to make such a bold statement. Choosing this American artist for the first contemporary art retrospective in Versailles is an uncompromised move to new lectures of its history, enriching a thriving international culture .
For those who want to learn more about curating, I recommend the book “Issues in curating contemporary art and performance” edited by Judith Rugg and Michèle Sedgwick. I was expecting some kind of pretentious artist blah-blah but the articles from Paul O’Neill or JJ Charlesworth for example where actually very sensible and useful.
Christophe Bruchansky
Interesting review of the Versailles / Koons confrontation where the strongest symbols of magnificience confronts themselves. I also had the same feeling in front of the flower bouquet in Marie Antoinette bedroom’s. You hardly guess that it’s an add on from the 20th century. I later remembered that the bouquet comes from a serie of Koons called Pornography…
Thanks for the information, I didn’t know that dimension. Here is what I found on http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2106:
“Jeff Koons used flowers to represent sexuality in his “Made in Heaven” series. Of his Large Vase of Flowers (1991), Koons wrote, “There are 140 flowers. They are very sexual and fertile, and at the same time they are 140 assholes.” “