Christopher Knight responds

He’s replying to two items in this post:

I’m taking a
break from the Tournament of Roses–no sighting of Jeff Koons’ “Puppy”
yet–so two quick things. First, thanks for the kind words. Second,
you’re wrong about Koons and about Cezanne.

Koons career did not take a nose dive after the critical beating of
1991’s “Made in Heaven.” In a stand-alone article the New York Times
said of “Puppy,” his Documenta scene-stealer the following year, “The
work seems intended to redeem his reputation in the wake of his
controversial exhibition at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York last
fall, dominated by pornographic paintings of the artist making love to
his wife, the Italian porn-star Ciccolina.” The review’s author,
Roberta Smith (who knows Jerry Saltz), then rendered her verdict: ”
‘Puppy’ shows Mr. Koons at his goofy, innocent best…” Six months
later a well-received mid-career Koons retrospective opened at the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and in 1993 it traveled to the Walker
Art Center. Few artists I know would consider a stand-alone rave in the
NYT followed by a retrospective hosted by SFMOMA and the Walker to
represent a period of career nose-dive.

As for Cezanne: Hickey said nothing in his Smithsonian lecture about
where artists choose to live and work. He was speaking about art’s
reception, which was the reason I referred to his comments. Cezanne
certainly did well painting at his remote cabin at Bibémus Quarries,
for example. But it was his posthumous 1907 retrospective at the Salon
d’Automne — in cosmopolitan Paris — that made him the most
influential artist of the early 20th century. Call me crazy, but had
the show been mounted in a lovely village around Aix-en-Provence, that
probably would not have been the outcome.

Meanwhile, in Pasadena, I just saw a giant, marigold-covered blowfish go by. Yikes!