...and after taking a class in it last summer, I consider myself an expert. (I'm an expert on lots of things; just ask me.) But much of it still leaves me scratching my head. One of the more perplexing artists I encountered last summer was Jeff Koons, who is the subject of this piece today in the Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-24/jeff-koons-destructive-impulses/
Take a look at it and tell me why some of his work is worth millions of dollars. Like I said, I don't get it. And much of his more "idiosyncratic" work, shall we say, was left out of this gallery. Like the photographs he took of his wife, for instance, who was an ex-porn star. If that isn't pornography, then I don't know what is.
Our instructor accompanied us to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago to view many of the works in this article. The first piece we came to was a Plexiglas box with four vacuum cleaners stacked inside and illuminated by fluorescent lighting, which sold for almost $12 million. (How much can a vacuum cleaner cost, a couple hundred bucks? Now that's what I call value added!) It went downhill from there. The next piece consisted of a glass tank which contained three basketballs floating in water. At one point we considered the sculpture, Woman in Tub, which is included in the Daily Beast article. After gazing at it for a few seconds I had to ask, "Why did he cut her head off?" This elicited a few giggles from my more sophisticated classmates. (What a ma-roon!)
"I don't know," he replied. "What do you think?"
How the heck should I know? I'm just a middle-aged jamoke from the suburbs. You're the gay PhD candidate. What am I paying you four hundred dollars for?
"He ran out of porcelain?" (More laughter.)
"Let's move on."
My point here isn't that Koons didn't create artwork of value. He undoubtedly did, even if a Philistine like me can't see it. But could it really be worth millions? Or does the emperor, like Jeff Koons's wife, have no clothes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I've been meaning to comment on the idea of having medical benefits taxed as a means of paying for national healthcare. I think this is too narrow of an approach and is an example of redistribution of wealth that many people fear. To pay for a national healthcare program we should not put a further burden specifically on the people that happen to be successfully employed.
My suggestion is to make an additional payroll tax similar to what we all pay for medicare. Maybe 1% of wages that would be paid by everyone. That way the people that will benefit from the national healthplan would be making some payment. Maybe 1% or a minimum of $100 per month.So if your making $18,000 a year and don't have employer health insurance you pay a premium of $100 per month. People that lose their jobs would get healthcare as long as they keep paying the amount that they were paying when they were employed or some minimum amount like the $100 per month.In order for any plan to be reasonable everyone needs to pay. There could be a special group that is the chronically ill that would receive healthcare under a welfare arrangement. This system would require every able body individual to pay something for health insurance.
Wouldn't an additional payroll tax "put a further burden specifically on the people that happen to be successfully employed?"
No. Because it would be a tax on all people employed including the people that don't have employer health insurance.People that don't have health insurance through their employer would be most likely to use the national health insurance and they should pay a good portion of the cost. National health insurance should be a bare bones form of catastrophic health insurance. Similar to medicare many people would have other health insurance to provide them the complete coverage they want.
That makes sense. I don't think I've seen that anywhere. Is it in any of the plans before Congress?
I haven't seen a lot of the proposals that they are working on. The surtax idea was awful. I'm disappointed that Rangel and other dems. are clearly focused on redistribution of wealth programs like the surtax. That kind of proposal destroys any optimism that the average guy would have around a national healthcare insurance program.
Post a Comment