The first line of the article on Jeff Koons in the New Yorker is..."If art is ever delivered from the grip of postmodern irony, a large share of the credit will go to Jeff Koons." Yeah if it's a reaction against this type of corporate ready-made work! Calvin Tomkins basically lays out the Koons biography with bits of thought pumped in for critical non-distance. Later in the same paragraph he writes - "If there is irony here it is lost on the artist." And I guess he's right because Jeff Koons has always maintained that he is what he says he is. The work is too. It comes straight out of the corporate superpowers and I believe that Koons' work has always been about the total takeover of imagination by the insipid Madison Avenue advertisers. I remember reading a story told by Koons where at a dinner party he raised his glass to toast his guests to say "here's to good friends..." and realized later that was from an advertisement for some beer or other. He was happy about that. It seems he's happy to be a part of the superficial and fastidious - finding heartfelt expression in the artificial. And after reading about some of the intrigue in his life you kinda feel sorry for old Koons - maybe he really does enjoy the Koolaid.

He strives to make his work middlebrow and accessible. The art part of it is in the "perfectionism" of execution that he demands - and this part is hammered home again and again. For Koons art is not really in the idea part of it - which is usually using someone else's hard won style as a backdrop - like Rosenquist for his painting - or Brancusi for his sculpture - but in the blowing up of the form, the perfection of manufacturing or the endless re-contextualizing that goes on. Koons will spin a tale around a toy lobster that will make you think you're dealing with 300 years of art history. But all this means in the end is one thing - consumate bullshit - or in the art world - postmodern irony.

IN Harry G. Frankfurt's essay "On Bullshit" he lays out the guiding principles behind this POMO media drenched age of advertising sloganeering and approrpiation culture. As Harry might define it - Jeff Koons' obsession with perfection falls within these parameters...

"The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain inner strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and objectivity. It entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness that, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. But in fact it is not out of the question at all. The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who — with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and so forth — dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly right."

The article reports that Koon's has on staff 80 people. 80. All working on giant paintings, sculptures and computers. Koons apparently touches nothing, but spends his time getting every thing to his exacting specifications. In other words it's about control rather than creation. He picks media images from many sources, has them uploaded then directs the photoshopping, the color choices, the sizes etc. He is the head of a large design firm that realizes his choices. This is art based on the corporate model - CEO top down execution. The works are being made to specifications then adjusted through the processes with major re-works done to reinsititute the power of the director. In Koons' case the reworking of a painted color or the sheen of sculpture. Now god knows - artists are all about getting the color right and the patina just so - but for Koons these adjustments run into the thousands of dollars (and in some cases lawsuits costing millions of dollars) which are then used to publicize his art credentials. This sort of attention to detail has made Koons the darling of corporate America - where this sort of getting it right - is all about power and control. I refer you to the recent article on Frank Gehry's new building here in Manhattan as a good example.

"It was Mr. Diller who insisted, for instance, that the building be sheathed in glass, instead of the titanium or metal that Mr. Gehry is so renowned for. Mr. Diller is also the one who insisted on white windows. When Mr. Gehry first showed Mr. Diller a model of his design, he used a white material to represent the window panes, and Mr. Diller fell in love with the idea of white windows.

“Barry got fixated on having a white glass building,” Mr. Gehry said. “Which can’t be done. For a long time, he didn’t want to believe that you couldn’t do it.” Eventually, Mr. Gehry presented Mr. Diller with windows that were half white, which he accomplished through an engineering innovation, and Mr. Diller accepted it.

True to his reputation for micromanaging, Mr. Diller was immersed deeply in even the tiniest detail. He picked out the bathroom tiles and pored over the rug samples. The boardroom has a big, bold, oval conference table that harkens to the iconic conference furniture of yore — except that a small, hidden computer can slide out for every person present. All of these touches speak to Mr. Diller’s obsessive involvement in the project."

It is this involvement in the details that has become mistaken for art or even for competence - but it is actually about control. By controlling the details one hamstrings the creative process and it's search for some kind of visual truth. By controlling the details one controls the pathways to understanding. Details are the perfect place to set up a monopoly on understanding and it insures the only ambiguity allowed is one's own - this monopoly on truth is really part and parcel of this corporate age. It is this failure of actual open visual dialog that is called into question. Control's best weapon is bullshit so once again we head back to Harry for a little more clarification.

"What bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to."

The ultimate POMO gesture is found in Koons' new locomotive "sculpture." He hangs a locomotive engine from a crane over the entrance to the new Renzo Piano building at the LACMA. This steaming chugging behemoth will be a right of passage into the art of the 20th Century. Michael Govan says, "You'll be able to see the crane from the number 10 freeway, from Hollywood, from downtown. The metaphor here is to create a town square. It's like a clock tower- you'll measure your distance by it...." And once again we read the need for control and power. It will be seen, it will be a center and you'll measure your distance. You will be controlled through the sight and workings of this train. This is an American aesthetic through and through starting with the reactive materialism of Abstract Expression to the corrupted visual aesthetic of European Modernism and ending with the Corporate Postmodern Entertainment Industry. Big physical works that demand big physical gestures - large museums, huge exhibition halls, art fairs, biennials, giant cranes, outscaled ballons, silver blow up animals. This is Postmodern America - and it's guiding principles. Will a suspended locomotive become a sexual metaphor as Koons insists or is it yet another badge of honor and light entertainment for the equestrian classes? It's this ambiguity that must be constantly micromanaged from on high.

Harry writes..."It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

Of course Koons' is the king of POMO. He is it's best practictioner and true believer. He is not "post-postmodern" as this article seems to want to say. The trope of his work lies in its absolute sincerity about insincere things. Their aesthetic reality is enhanced through the guaranty of the institutions that collect them. It is the continuing conundrum of power rather than innovation - of academy over thought. For postmodernism power is in controlling the language around belief. The less one questions the more in tune with the culture. As Koons himself says in the article, "I realized you don't have to know anything, and I think my work always lets the viewer know that...."