{"id":903,"date":"2008-09-13T18:02:11","date_gmt":"2008-09-14T01:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/09\/balloon-dog-at-versailles\/"},"modified":"2008-09-13T16:08:14","modified_gmt":"2008-09-13T23:08:14","slug":"balloon-dog-at-versailles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/09\/13\/balloon-dog-at-versailles\/","title":{"rendered":"Balloon Dog at Versailles"},"content":{"rendered":"

from the New York Times<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

At the Court of the Sun King, Some All-American Art<\/nyt_headline><\/h1>\n

<\/p>\n

Ed Alcock for The New York Times<\/p>\n

\u201cBalloon Dog\u201d by Jeff Koons at the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles exhibition.\u00a0More Photos><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

At the Court of the Sun King, Some All-American Art<\/nyt_headline><\/h1>\n

<\/nyt_byline><\/p>\n

By\u00a0ELAINE SCIOLINO<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/nyt_text><\/p>\n

VERSAILLES, France \u2014 An aluminum red lobster hangs from the ceiling alongside a crystal chandelier in the Mars Salon. A plexiglass-encased display of vacuum cleaners and floor polishers sits in front of the official portrait of Marie Antoinette. And an open-mouthed, bare-breasted blonde holding a pink panther seems to be laughing at a 1729 painting of Louis XV conferring peace upon Europe.<\/p>\n

America has invaded the gilded chambers and sculptured gardens of the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles in the form of a much-debated exhibition by the American superstar artist\u00a0Jeff Koons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Versailles in recent years has displayed only a few select works of contemporary artists, and even then they were shown ever so briefly. The exhibition of 17 Koons sculptures marks the first time that the chateau built by Louis XIV has organized so ambitious a retrospective of one contemporary artist. \u201cJeff Koons Versailles,\u201d which opened on Wednesday, will continue until Dec. 14.<\/p>\n

Mr. Koons expressed delight that the first retrospective ever of his work in France is at Versailles. After all, nearly 5 million people visit the chateau, and 8 to 10 million stroll the gardens every year, according to official Versailles figures.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thrilled with the totality of the whole experience,\u201d he said Wednesday as he posed for photographers in the palace gardens in front of \u201cSplit-Rocker,\u201d his 11-ton stainless-steel sculpture covered in 90,000 live flowers and plants. \u201cIt\u2019s so profound \u2014 the high point of my artistic life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone here was as pleased by the installation. Several dozen people demonstrated outside the palace gates early Wednesday, a protest organized by the National Union of Writers of France, a little-known, right-wing group dedicated to artistic purity in France.<\/p>\n

The exhibition \u201cstrikes at the heart of a civilization\u201d and \u201cis an outrage to Marie Antoinette,\u201d said Arnaud-Aaron Upinsky, the group\u2019s chairman.<\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading at NYTimes.com <\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from the New York Times At the Court of the Sun King, Some All-American Art Ed Alcock for The New York Times \u201cBalloon Dog\u201d by Jeff Koons at the Ch\u00e2teau de Versailles exhibition.\u00a0More Photos> At the Court of the Sun King, Some All-American Art By\u00a0ELAINE SCIOLINO VERSAILLES, France \u2014 An aluminum red lobster hangs from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}