God, Do I Hate This Guy!

I recently watched an older episode of Iconoclasts on the Sundance Channel that annoyed the hell out of me. The wonderful Tom Ford explored the studio and working life of the incredibly irritating Jeff Koons. My god, that man drives me to distraction. His talent is virtually non-existent yet his ego is beyond enormous and frankly, his eyes (and his personality) give the uber-creeps. True, Koons has billed himself as "the most written about artist in the world" but I'd bet any money on this being true only because he's such an arrogant, pompous ass that people just have to write about him to vent their hatred of him in a non-violent way.

Dating back to his earliest well-known works in which he boffed that hideously ugly and classless then-wife of his in large-format photos, paintings and sculptures to his current installation pieces that apparently are all executed by his minions under his dictates, virtually every single piece in his career has been (according to Jeff himself) an homage of sorts to another artist: this repetitive image of a playboy model is "an homage" to Warhol's Elvis silkscreens, this silver streak is "an homage" to Warhol's pillows, this thought bubble is "an homage" to Lichtenstein, these basketballs are "an homage" to Duchamp. And what, gentle reader, do you take away from all this? I know what I get from it: Koons seldom has any ideas that are truly original to him and since he's now too important and busy to even create any of his own works anymore, it no longer matters. Actually, it probably never did. I just don't get, have never gotten, what all the positive buzz is about this guy. The negative stuff I more than understand. Having been sued numerous times for copyright infringements of other peoples' works, how anyone can consider this guy an artist, let alone a 'genius' as many clearly insane people believe, is beyond me.

I knew I shouldn't have watched that episode. I knew it was going to get me all riled up about what a joke Koons is. But hell, at least Tom Ford was a joy to watch.