That show — from the colorful billboard for a non-existent movie starring the lovers, to the unambiguous Ilana’s Asshole — was rejected by the art world, which felt Koons had taken exploitation too far. But it is instructive to read the reviews, which fastidiously avoid the noticeably hardcore porn.
Perhaps the art of those bad aesthetic times was prophylactically sealed against reality. Better to talk about provocation, institutional critique, the raising of consciousness, the way in which Koons always referred to high art — bling, but with added rococo — than the content. For what is the content, if not a poke in the eye?
Bright yet dark, shrewd yet vacuous: Koons’ art remains poised in equal tension. And when you get to Damien Hirst’s gallery full of gold calves in formaldehyde, gold spot paintings, gold vitrines dazzling with diamonds, it is no longer so obvious to whom he owes the greater debt: the production line of Koons or Warhol?
The British galleries of Pop Life give Tate Modern its first chance to show Hirst, Emin, Lucas, Gavin Turk et al as international history, which has the effect of deactivating their art. What were slick, rude, crude, epigrammatic, hilarious or willfully dumb now look like the artifacts of air-conditioned archives.
Not everyone will lament this, of course, but the Americans do generally get a better presentation. Warhol’s silkscreened gemstones are shown in ultra-violet light, Haring has a great rap sound track, Koons gets all the floodlight he could want. The show is buzzy, theatrical, densely jammed and much more of a blast than expected.
It is of course composed of fast art: nothing to detain you for long, though plenty to prime the post-show conversation. How quickly repetition set in as modus operandi: the series, the reiteration, the flogged horse, the running gag, the market-servicing multiple and edition. How often sex sold art, how often artists sold their looks, how indivisible art frequently seemed from prostitution, promotion and pornography.
And how empty the provocations often were — and still are.
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