{"id":9802,"date":"2019-05-18T16:59:48","date_gmt":"2019-05-18T23:59:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=9802"},"modified":"2019-05-19T14:22:11","modified_gmt":"2019-05-19T21:22:11","slug":"cast-inflatable-haters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2019\/05\/18\/cast-inflatable-haters\/","title":{"rendered":"Cast Inflatable Haters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from The New York Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop Hating Jeff Koons <\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Why \u201cRabbit,\u201d the perfect art for the roaring mid-80s, continues to speak to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0<\/strong>Roberta Smith<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Jeff Koons poses with \u201cRabbit\u201d at the Tate Modern in 2009.CreditCreditDaniel Deme\/EPA, via Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jeff Koons is back on top, if on top means holding the highest auction price for a living artist, as hyped by the auction house responsible. Mr. Koons\u2019s 1986 \u201cRabbit,\u201d a precise stainless steel copy of a plastic inflatable toy \u2014 mirror-smooth yet with seams and puckers \u2014 sold Wednesday night at Christie\u2019s Post-War and Contemporary Art sale for $91.1 million, the highlight of New York\u2019s buoyant spring auctions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It broke the record set last fall when Christie\u2019s auctioned David Hockney\u2019s \u201cPortrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures)\u201d \u2014 a 1972painting the size of a small mural \u2014 for $90.3 million. But let\u2019s get real. The hammer price for both works was actually $80 million. The \u201cRabbit\u201d inched ahead by a whisker \u2014 about $762,500 \u2014 because of a twist of fate: Christie\u2019s increased the fees buyers pay on Feb. 1. The difference was simply a matter of auction house profit-seeking. It recalls the soaring home-run statistics from baseball\u2019s \u201csteroid era\u201d before testing for performance enhancing drugs became routine. The price should have an asterisk or footnote \u2014 something that says, hey, the final bids on these two art works were exactly the same. It was a tie.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Koons, who is 64, set his first living-artist auction record in 2013, when his\u00a0\u201cBalloon Dog (Orange)\u201d<\/a>\u00a0sold for $58.4 million, also at Christie\u2019s. Then came a precipitous drop: The artist\u2019s big painted aluminum \u201cPlay-Doh\u201d went for $22.8 million in 2014. Unlike \u201cPlay-Doh,\u201d the \u201cRabbit,\u201d made in 1986, has been with us over three decades, alternately loved and hated. Some of its most fervent admirers see it as the perfect work of art for its moment, the roaring mid-1980s. I don\u2019t disagree. I also think it continues to speak to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

from The New York Times Stop Hating Jeff Koons  Why \u201cRabbit,\u201d the perfect art for the roaring mid-80s, continues to speak to us. By\u00a0Roberta Smith Jeff Koons is back on top, if on top means holding the highest auction price for a living artist, as hyped by the auction house responsible. Mr. Koons\u2019s 1986 \u201cRabbit,\u201d […]<\/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-9802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9802","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=9802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9802\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}