The New Museum is packed tight with coveted art bling today. Rummaging through Dakis Joannou’s voluminous, much-talked-about private collection, guest curator Jeff Koons has turned up some cool stuff. The phrase “museum ethics” hasn’t really crossed my mind, but “fruit salad” has.
The focus is pretty loose: genesis, original sin, sex, interior/exterior and so forth. While most works do dress or peel the human form nicely — Pawel Althamer’s Nomo gilded spaceman/medieval warrior, Kiki Smith’s mouth-masturbating Mother/Child, Paul McCarthy various penis-nosed and pig-bodied rapscallions — others stick out sorely — Koons’ own weaseled-in basketball and the exhibit’s most expensive trinket, Charles Ray’s clever but caption-requiring carousel (that wins the “Work I Want to Ride” award.) A tad off-topic standout is Tino Seghal’s This is Propaganda, a one-line song performed by interchanging museum attendants which at first felt like a sincere outburst (sincerely appreciated).
The problem wasn’t so much ethical as organizational. With so much packed together, spatial juxtapositions seemed circumstantial and not conceptual — Robert Gobert’s Two Spread Legs are [possibly intentionally] lost in his Highway wallpapered room with warped Pitched Crib, while others are almost stacked between corners and doors. There are some genuinely interesting works and variety is always fun, but the show feels crowded. With so much expensive stuff to parade about, that must have been hard to avoid. New Museum’s board of trustees member Joannou is a collector with wide grabbing-up ability, but Koons’ curating approach is less than cohesive. “Skin Fruit” — half-way between luxurious garage sale and exhibit: It’s worth seeing the peaches if you don’t mind the piles of prunes.
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- Paul McCarthy, Paula Jones; Jannis Varelas, My dad is stronger than yours, Rainbow Rocket Bill and Friend; Tim & Sue Noble, Webster Masters of the Universe
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- Robert Gober, Two Spread Legs; Highway; Pitched Crib
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- Jeff Koons, One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank
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- Liza Lou Super Sister, Charles Ray Revolution Counter-Revolution
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- Kiki Smith, Mother/Child
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- Urs Fisher, What if the Phone Rings
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- Tino Seghal, This is Propaganda
Images: Marina Galperina
Putting the ethical part about this show away, let's look at the meat? Nothing to eat and all bones. Artists and collectors patting each other on the back. The show says a lot about what is going on in the art world of New York City–not much. If I want to see porn, I would rather see the real thing. This show is artistic masturbation in public. And these so-called super stars of the art world, Koons, Kara Walker, and Kiki Smith, appear to be little kids eating animal crackers. Art occupies so little in American culture. The Wall Street mentality has taken over the New York art scene.
Sculptor Jerry Harris
San Francisco, Ca.
What I appreciated the most about this exhibition is the interaction of the different pieces with each other. In such a crowded and tight space, each piece is redefined by the pieces around it, and I spent my whole visit trying to create a narrative about this interaction. What would Chocolate Mountains say to the tall blonde woman? What if the pieces were arranged differently and on other floors? I think a community of art, and art in context, which this exhibition conveys very well, is something missing from the compartmentalized spaces of most other museums. Although jaded critics may slam this exhibition for its politics and origins, none are really discussing with seriousness what implications this exhibition makes about the human condition. The art world is wall street only if you see it that way.