Fine Arf: Jeff Koons Ballooning Ego Bursts

Just when you think artist/charlatan Jeff Koons reaches the nadir of respectability/believability, he digs just a little deeper. As an early Christmas gift, Koons instructed his lawyers to issue a “cease and desist” letter to Park Life Gallery in San Francisco. Koons insisted that they discontinue selling “balloon dog” bookends (the offenders appear above) because he “owned” the idea of balloon dogs as art thanks to his earlier enlarged metallic balloon dog sculptures. Yes, balloon dogs—standard repertoire of children’s party magicians and core curriculum of clown colleges everywhere—are now the intellectual property of Jeff Koons, or at least he claims. Koons takes fine arf, er, art to an absurd extreme and threatens finally to burst the massive hot air balloon of his own, overgrown ego.

[Many thanks to Roy, my Left Coast source for art news, for bringing this story to my attention.]

Getting to Yes: Pope Consecrates Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia

On November 7^th, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated Antoni Gaudí’s weirdly wonderful masterpiece of religious architecture, the Sagrada Família (shown above). The Catholic Church tends to distrust anything modern these days, so seeing it accept one of the earliest works of modern 20^th century architecture seems a little out of character. Some hope that this marks a change in the persistent “no” of the current Pope to a more hopeful, accepting “yes.” Everything about the Sagrada Família screams “yes” to the exuberance of life and overflowing imagination. Getting to that “yes,” and getting to the Papal “yes,” remains an interesting story and a work in progress. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Getting to Yes."

Old Friends: The Surrealists at the National Galleries of Scotland

When Roland Penrose began buying artwork after returning to England in 1935, he focused on purchasing the works of the Parisian Surrealists—the circle of artists that had embraced him as one of their own. Old friends such as Dali, Magritte, Miro, Picasso, De Chirico, and others graced Penrose’s walls. Penrose left most of his collection to the National Galleries of Scotland, who bring the old gang together in Another World: Dali, Magritte, Miro and the Surrealists, an exhibition running through January 9, 2011. Scotland doesn’t seem like the obvious place for Surrealism, but isn’t that the point of Surrealism? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Old Friends."



[Many thanks to the National Galleries of Scotland for providing me with a review copy of the catalogue to Another World: Dali, Magritte, Miro and the Surrealists, which runs through January 9, 2011.]

The Eyes Have It: Frida Kahlo Retrospective in Germany

One of the most overlooked aspects of the life of Frida Kahlo is that the artist who exemplified Mexican national identity had a father born in Germany. Thanks to exhibitions in Germany and Austria, Frida returns to her German roots for the first time. The catalogue for those exhibitions, Frida Kahlo: Retrospective, from Prestel, gathers together some of the finest paintings by Frida along with eye-opening essays that touch upon aspects of her art—her writings, the codified love story, her politics—that sometimes get lost in the cult of personality fueling Fridamania. But we always return in the end to the paintings themselves, especially the self-portraits, which return our gaze with eyes that compel us to look deeper. The eyes still have it, more than a half century after Kahlo’s death, and her story and her art still capture our imaginations. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "The Eyes Have It."



[Many thanks to Prestel for providing me with a review copy of Frida Kahlo: Retrospective, the catalogue to exhibitions at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany, until August 9, 2010, and at the Bank Austria Kunstforum, Vienna, Austria, from September 2, through December 5, 2010.]