Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol

What about, 'Whose face was more poker?' Or 'Are they capitalism's devil's advocates?' Or 'Has anyone in pop music (from Kraftwerk to the KLF) played the game of appropriation as cleverly?' Or 'Which of them would win at push penny?' Or 'Their adaptation of the Duchampian readymade?' Or 'Why hate artists who show America like it is, when you can hate America instead?'

Now you're beginning to hear people saying 'Of course, what nobody ever comments is how great a painter Warhol was, the colours, paintings and screen printing were so fresh, etc etc.' This is an attempt by the sort of people who read Modern Painters magazine to reclaim these world- class heavyweight C20 artists from the camp of Duchamp (the conceptualists, the appropriationists) and put them into the camp of Matisse and Picasso (craftsmen, painters, storytellers). Which is not the point at all.

It would be like saying 'Of course, it's often overlooked that Bill Drummond of the KLF was an incredibly under-rated guitar player, as good in his way as Jimmy Page'.

The material these artists use is not paint, but society itself. When they're hated (and they are: someone on another thread was ready to dismiss me for even mentioning Koons) it's in the spirit of 'kill the messenger'. People don't like being forced to recognise their own society in an Andy Warhol electric chair or car crash or Elvis or Marilyn, just as they baulk at seeing what Amis called America's 'moronic inferno' in a Koons puppy dog.

But the double whammy of his work, and the thing that creeps people out about him, is that when you see a Hallmark-style puppy in an art gallery, you think: 'Wait a minute, art is meant to be about 'the finest and the best', it's meant to rival religion as a provider of deep meanings. It's meant to be the place we find spiritual meanings' (look at all the spiritual tosh that comes up when people discuss Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko). So to see a puppy there -- well, to some it's just 'Aw, that's cute!' But to others it's like looking down a liftshaft into the void. (Hey, I sound like an 80s NME writer now!)

1. Case study one. Lennon climbs a ladder in a London Gallery. At the top he has to stand almost on tiptow to look through a little lens at a phrase on the ceiling. He reads, greatly magnified, the single word "Yes". He descends the ladder, falls in love with the artist, and inadvertently completes the last and greatest flux-project (i. marry any beatle; ii. destroy all pop). He said that if it had said "No", he would have walked out of the gallery, disappointed, and never given the piece or the show another thought.
2. I am teasing a well-known Adorno-ite Wire writer about a rock-book I have discovered. It argues that PROG ROCK in general and THIS GROUP in particular are the full realisation of Adorno's difficult desires for music. "That can't be," he wails, cross yet amused: "They are called YES!!"

Dave Q: Maybe he doesn't admit to any critical element because there isn't any.

If there isn't any critical element, why did Koons call his breakthrough exhibition in the 80s 'Ushering In Banality'? Banal = cheap, trashy, idiotic, common. Why was Koons photographed in publicity for the show in the guise of a teacher, standing in front of a class of primary school kids, writing on the blackboard the message 'Exploit the masses'?

Someone cynical would simply exploit the masses and usher in banality. Koons insisted on being photographed with a large pig, cheerfully 'ushering in banality', or as a corrupter of youth. These are the actions of someone who wants to highlight moral issues, even at the cost of his own good reputation.

I should know, I've lived in that particular monkey house!

So when he married Ciccolina, did he do it to highlight moral issues, knowing it would cost him his moral reputation (assuming he ever had one)? Or was it a publicity stunt? Or did he just like taking naughty pics of her? Wouldn't actually marrying a porn star (a person who embodies banal cheap common denominator sexuality and one assumes, personality) demonstrate a lack of cynicism? Or was this the ultimate in cyinicism?

Seriously, I think it's possible he saw it many ways:

* Publicity stunt * He saw Cicciolina as a fellow performance artist. She was an Italian MP, remember, standing on a 'sex for all' platform. * He saw her as simply 'trying to make people happy' in the same way he claimed to be, yet also, simultaneously, outraging bourgeois taste (as he also did). * He genuinely wanted to fuck her and give her babies, like little Ludwig, the baroque prince they created. * His 'Made In Heaven' photos blasphemously mix the bourgeois sacrament of marriage with pornography. Thereby, of course, restoring to marriage its real meaning: a license to hump and pump.

A man who reveals simple truths like this -- that piggish pleasure underpins, and yet threatens, civilisation as we know it -- is either a moralist or a late Freudian.

(By the way, I think his Cicciolina work is his weakest.)

Warhol: anyone else heard the theory that Andy suffered from Aspberger's Syndrome? Believable or utter bologna?

Diagnostic Criteria For 299.80 Asperger's Disorder A. Qualitative impairment in social interaction, as manifested by at least two of the following: marked impairments in the use of multiple nonverbal behaviors such as eye-to-eye gaze, facial expression, body postures, and gestures to regulate social interaction failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level a lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people (e.g. by a lack of showing, bringing, or pointing out objects of interest to other people) lack of social or emotional reciprocity B. Restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities, as manifested by at least one of the following: encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms (e.g., hand or finger flapping or twisting, or complex whole-body movements) persistent preoccupation with parts of objects C. The disturbance causes clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning D. There is no clinically significant general delay in language (e.g., single words used by age 2 years, communicative phrases used by age 3 years) E. There is no clinically significant delay in cognitive development or in the development of age-appropriate self-help skills, adaptive behavior (other than social interaction), and curiosity about the environment in childhood F. Criteria are not met for another specific Pervasive Developmental Disorder or Schizophrenia

Kerry - these traits are not habits, they're hardwired.

There he goes, the man who didn't like Jeff Koons
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/sep/25/cult-jeff-koons/

God I miss Mike Kelley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6TG9gIZRG4