Just saw the new Broad wing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, perfect L.A. architecture for the light and long spaces of the Pacific West with high airy big rooms for Jeff Koons best works, same for Baldesari, etc.
Jeff Koons gets pride of place in the middle of the great room at the new Broad Wing of the Los Angeles County of Art Museum.
His heroic graven image in glorious Greek classic painted sculpture of Michael Jackson is the best piece in the room. Reclining Jackson holds his pet monkey on what would be his lap if he were seated. The glittering gold and scarlet of Jackson’s costume repeats on his pet. Both have blank white marble plastic faces surreally serene in emptiness, not in contemplation.

Koons brilliantly refers not just to classic Greek images, but more centrally, to the first century Christian Good Shepherd holding dear the lamb he has saved through his grace. Jackson’s cosmetically cut new face reminds that America is the only country where slaves were one fifth of the population, all torn from Africa (est. 18 million robbed that continent of population growth for two centuries) to grow cotton for the industrial revolution. In turn most of the whites in Europe and America became industrial wage slaves who today, absent from the nature and farm life, are the bland, lonely worshipers of Koons’ idol of pop culture.

Pre-cotton British and French sugar slavery in the Caribbean is absent from Koons’ piece. But cheap, empty calories sweeten even the poorest lives at Koon’s altar to mass culture and he finds that funny as well as endearing. Not bad for a screed about folly.

@bob baker: Wow, thanks for your detailed report and some insights into Mr Koons head and art!