Photo courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
between the audience of the gallery and customer of the mall—that give
the works their meanings. In this topsy-turvy world, high becomes low and
low becomes high. Handcraftsmanship begins to appear elite, while fine
art or craft that dispenses with it becomes populist. Taste becomes a mat-
ter of context, not content.
In keeping with these reversals, Murakami has played with mass mar-
keting and has included shops selling his specially designed Louis Vuitton
bags within his own museum retrospective. Koons, meanwhile, draws the
models for his high-end kitsch from airport gift shops and discount stores,
and has successfully courted non-art audiences by placing his works in
public spaces. However, despite these flirtations with the mass audience,
one is far more likely to encounter the work of these artists within the
precincts of those galleries and museums firmly associated with “high art ”
[figu r e a].
In those settings, their “craftlike” production and distribution
tend to be seen as ironic gestures rather than a sign of dedication to popu-
lar taste. And certainly the well-heeled collectors who shell out millions
of dollars for their works are more acquainted with Gagosian Gallery and
the Museum of Modern Art than they are with the aisles of Wal-Mart.
Yet, to dismiss the craftlike activities of art superstars like Murakami
and Koons as acts of pure cynicism is to miss the very interesting light
they cast on the relationship between art and craft. They deliberately blur
distinctions and blend genres in a way that illuminates the class and social
differences often associated with these two fields. And they do so in a
manner that suggests the differing ways that art and craft interact in differ-
ent cultures and social situations.
Let’s start with Koons. Contrary to Perl’s lament about the absence of
handcraftsmanship in his work, in fact a number of Koons’s best-known
(and most highly valued) works were created by master ceramists, glass-
blowers, and wood and stone carvers-albeit from dime-store models or
airport postcards the artist has selected. For example, to create
Stacked
,
based on a plastic trinket depicting a group of animals stacked on each
other’s backs, Koons employed German and Italian master craftsmen who
partake of a centuries-long tradition of fabricating ornamental and reli-
gious sculptures. This work was sold at auction in February 2009 for over
$4 million. O f course this pales next to the $23.4 million paid at auction
in November 2007 for Koon’s
Hanging Heart,
a nine-foot-tall magenta and
gold chromium steel valentine’s heart whose execution was highly labor-
intensive, paying homage to the artisanal impulse in the 6,000 man-hours
it reportedly consumed over a 10-year period.
Speaking to the critic David Sylvester, Koons described his obsession
with detail: “When I make an artwork, I try to use craft as a way, hope-
fully, to give the viewer a sense of trust. I never want anyone to look at
a painting, or to look at a sculpture, and to lose trust in it somewhere.” 3
Craft for him is less about his own hand than about attention to detail and
technical perfection.
The trust he seeks, of course, translates into dollars. Koons’s transfor-
mation of tchotchkes into exquisitely crafted large-scale sculptures be-
stows on these humble models sufficient social cachet to make them mar-
ketable to collectors who would abhor such objects in their original form.
But it also highlights an essential paradox about the place of art and craft
in contemporary American culture and the nature of the audiences who>
3. Jeff Koons in David
Sylvester, “Jeff Koons
Interviewed,” Exh. cat.,
Berlin, Deutsche
Guggenheim, Easy fun -
Ethereal, Berlin, 2000,
pp. 23-24.
FIGURE 2
Takashi Murakami
Flower Mantango,
2007,
fiberglass, resin, oil,
paint, lacquer,
acrylic plates, iron,
157У2 x п
87
» x 98
7M
in.
fcb/m ario
american craft 081
www.journal-plaza.net & www.freedowns.net
