Koons

he also said that all of his work now is so that his son will know that he loves him
Cute. Sounds like David Bowie in 'The Man Who Fell To Earth', making records for his extra-terrestrial wife to hear over the radio.

he has done the backgrounds for the rolling stones new tour
I think that was probably a mistake.

So can we discuss the ethics of an artist destroying his own work
I don't think anyone would find that ethically problematical per se. I find Boticelli obnoxious for throwing his own paintings of naked human forms on the 'bonfire of the vanities' when Savonarola took over Florence. And I find Dali unethical for signing thousands of blank sheets which his dealer sold to unscrupulous print-makers. But Koons in this case, no problem.

his recent easy fun series (it features alot of disembodied female parts
I really don't think art can be questioned for what it chooses to portray. Art doesn't work in the same way political speeches, newspapers, religious injunctions etc do. The context is much more subtle, ambiguous and un-instrumental. The blameless depiction of anything and everything is a freedom art wins for having paid the price of powerlessness and pointlessness.

even the rolling stones work has panties stretched across a stage-how does that deal with his son
He could be making money for his son, rather than work that relates directly. But remember also, his little Ludwig is the son of one of the world's most famous porn stars, after all!

also he seems to be obsessed w. the "tragedy of michael jackson".
As a way into western culture, The Tragedy Of Michael Jackson seems better than most. I think if Shakespeare were around today, that's one he would jump at.

so i know that no one cares about mr koons
I'll post my photo of me and him hanging out on the USS Intrepid if you're not careful!

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Michael Jackson, King of Pop
Lady Jackson, his estranged lady wife
Diverse and sundrie apes
Macaulay Culkin, the Young Friend
Gonnoreah, the king's favourite daughter
Dr Thaddeus Thrush, Genital Doctor of Californie
The Jackson wassailers
Dr Wax, Facial Surgeon
A Tragicke chorus of Sony executives
Weird Al Yankovich, The Fool
etc

Apparently the party was a major art world schmooze-fest. Check out Calvin Tompkin's rather amusing item about this from the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?050207ta_talk_tomkins

Smashed the record for a work sold by a living artist (Richter) by $20m last night.

He's fucking shit isn't he

tho the basketball is pretty cool

feel like complaining about whether he's good or a fraud is very very point miss-y

How do we frame a Koons discussion then? Hyperreal postmodernity and the capital as the central 'point' of art?

ignore the 'the' before capital.

Do we praise his intentional (and signposted) lack of surface?

I am very bored at work so willing to engage in some hardcore Koons chat.

i think - and i wdn't just apply this to Koons but to art in general - you've got a set of sometimes-intersecting discourses: where his work stands (and another side branch here into what his "work" is, whether it is objects or practice or something else) in relation to art history, how the art market relates to these apparently non-capital forms of value, what his/his works' value is to you, whether anybody's practice must necessarily be engaged in a relationship with those discourses, whether there's a bourgeois establishment left to épater...

i don't have a pony in these discourses in any real way because i don't have an academic stake so to me any artist is essentially "here's my shit, you may like or not like it but what you think has no bearing on my earning power or on what anybody else thinks about this"...my judgements on any of this stuff are personal, ephemeral and in my case change with the weather and time of day...there are the Alps but tbh you can bugger off and visit somewhere else if you're not feeling them

the feelings he evokes in me are kinda lol and mostly anaesthetic

the pieces shattered on the floor are thousands of times more interesting than his balloon dogs

the accompanying photo is funny as hell, sorry https://t.co/2YUhxO9t7C pic.twitter.com/oQraqWt3n2

— 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫-𝐦𝐚𝐲𝐬 (@importantmeagan) February 18, 2023

those coyly crossed white crocs in the upper left deserve their own spin-off series imo