Are Jeff Koon's Inflatables Art?

I am torn on whether I consider Jeff Koon to be a real artist or a man takes art of another and calls it his own. On one side Koon banal to high art and is completely hands off where he lets everyone else do the work for him. In class today we discussed how Koon does not even know how to paint and he hires people who are probably eager students who just graduated from Art school looking for a job. On the other hand Jeff Koon has this added pressure to keep designing his art based on his theme of working with everyday objects. He tries to answer pop culture’s questions of taste and pleasure by designing different sculptures and works of art.

After looking at several of his works, although I am probably disagreeing with the majority; I actually enjoy his art. Even though he does not put the art together himself, he is the one who designs the art. Although it is similar to Andy Warhol’s pieces who similarly uses everyday objects such as Brillo boxes or Campbell’s soup cans, Koon’s in unique and causes a reaction and emotion which I feel is most important about art. I could not help but to look up more of his work after class because it is entertaining and creative. In a lot of his work you cannot help but laugh and I see nothing wrong with that. Koon is smiling in every picture that he takes with his art which is his goal for the viewers as well.

I enjoyed Koon’s Popeye exhibit that including several of his pieces such as: Popeye with his bulging muscles; the silicone-pumped breasts of a topless model; inflatable toys filled to bursting: all are complete, full, and as perfect as it is possible for them to be. All of his art looks happy and leads the viewer to leave with a smile as well. Koon chose to reproduce these cheap toys in hard metal because he found distilled in them all the freedom, fantasy and unselfconscious joy of childhood. Whether you call them found objects or assisted ready-mades, it took the eye of a great artist to appreciate their unrestrained imaginative vision, their joyous sense of design freed from the restraint of logic or good taste. His art is entirely, transparently impersonal. It keeps you at arm’s length because it proposes that the secret of happiness is to live life on the surface, not to take it too seriously, to always look on the bright side, never to give up.