Portrait of the mega-collector: Robert Cuoghi, “Megas Dakis,” 2007
“There’s a darkness in our zeitgeist today,” a theatrical producer is quoted saying on the front page of today’s NY Times “Arts” section, in an article that surveys the dour landscape of today’s new musicals.
That’s as good a description as any for the mood of the New Museum’s Skin Fruit (to June 6)—a disturbing display of works from Greek mega-collector Dakis Joannou‘s collection. There’s a lots of skin (a veritable penis convention) but the fruit within, more often than not, is rotten and tainted. “Creepy”—Francesco Bonami’s adjective for a portion of his current Whitney Biennial (which has Charles Ray and Tauba Auerbach in common with “Skin Fruit”)—seemed an even more appropriate post-mortem for the New Museum’s body count.
That’s not to criticize the exhibition, just to describe it. Putting aside the controversy generated by “Skin Fruit” for the moment, this was an enterprise worth doing and worth viewing—as eye-boggling (often monumental) in scale and substance as the similarly controversial “Sensation” show of collector Charles Saatchi‘s holdings. But this year’s hot-button private collection display was not, for me, nearly as riveting and exhilarating as the Brooklyn-British provocation.
As curator for this show, artist Jeff Koons has a predilection for works with a strong, look-at-me presence. Here’s one of those attention-grabbers:
David Altmejd, “The Giant,” 2006
It was fun to welcome back (for another star turn in a controversial private collection show) the sensation of “Sensation”—Chris Ofili, in fine dung-fertilized form. His two works from the 1990s provided a rare upbeat (and visually sumptuous) respite from the gloom:
Chris Ofili, “Rodin…The Thinker,” 1997
Chris Ofili, “Inner Visions,” 1998
Here’s a detail from the above:
While the exhibition consisted of mostly familiar names, it sometimes presented them in less familiar aspects, as was the case with Ofili…
Chris Ofili, “Blue Damascus,” 2004
…and Kara Walker (in sepia gouache instead of black cutouts):
Kara Walker, “John Brown,” 1996
But do New York audiences really need to see more of the following, already amply exposed in recent outings at the Brooklyn Museum (foreground) and the Guggenheim (background)?
Takashi Murakami, “Inochi,” 2004, in front of Richard Prince’s joke painting (with collaged personal checks), “I’m in a Limousine (Following a Hearse), 2005-6
I don’t know if the themes of grotesquery, decay and morbidity are a reflection of the collection or the selection. Deftly orchestrating and installing the show, Koons (who has some 48 works among the Greek magnate’s voluminous holdings) positioned his own signature (and signed) basketball-suspended-in-a-tank directly opposite the elevators on the first floor of the show (if you start from the bottom). It announces that you’ll be viewing what lies beyond through a Koons-ian lens:
Jeff Koons, “One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank,” 1985
But unlike most of the objects he has chosen, Koons’ own pieces (not otherwise present in this show) are luscious to look at. He had told the assembled scribes at press preview for the 2008 installation of his sculptures on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum that those works were about “joy.”
There’s no joy in Joannou:
Detail from Maurizio Cattelan, “Now,” 2004, a full-length sculpture of President Kennedy in an open casket, installed in a darkened room
But what about the media-fed controversy about relinquishing public museum space to a private collection (and, in this case, making matters even more problematic by ceding curatorial control to a friend of the collector)?
For now, I’ll just say that if what the New Museum’s director, Lisa Phillips, and its director of special exhibitions, Massimiliano Gioni, told me yesterday is true, I withdraw my most serious objections (although, as I will later explain, some uneasiness persists).
Private-collection shows, unless the works are promised to the museum (which these are not) are never entirely clear of ethical minefields. But I’m not an ultra-purist who argues that a group of important privately owned works should never be displayed in a public museum. I’m glad I got the opportunity to see Joannou’s (and, previously, Saatchi’s) acquisitions, and I believe that the public would be the poorer if there were only one way to experience a major collector’s personal vision—in a museum of the owner’s own.
COMING SOON: The New Museum’s tentative transparency.