The last time I was in Norwich, I picked up a leaflet for the Jeff Koons exhibition at Norwich Castle. I didn’t actually know that was what the leaflet was about when I picked it up. I just loved the picture on the front which showed a statue of two bears, apparently dressed in their Sunday best, waving and grinning inanely.
I’d heard of Koons, but had never seen any of his art and since the leaflet insisted that this was “an event worth travelling for”, it went on my must-see list for my next Norwich trip. (To tell you the truth, it was the only thing on the list. I haven’t yet reached the level of desperation where I have to drag PB to the Colman’s Mustard Museum, just to generate some blog fodder.)
A few days before the exhibition closed, in early September, I finally got my chance. Given the hype, I was slightly surprised to find that there were only two rooms of artworks, but our tickets covered general admission to the rest of the castle (more on that in my next post) so I was hardly going to demand a refund. (And of course, I’m British, so even if there had been no Koons art whatsoever on display, I still would have smiled politely and thanked the woman behind the ticket desk profusely. Perhaps even apologised just in case the absence of exhibits was somehow my fault.)
The ecstatic bears were hands-down the highlight of Room 1. I mean, just look at them. He’s wearing a waistcoat. She’s holding a little clutch bag with a heart on it. THEY’VE GOT MATCHING HATS. There’s no way that a few basketballs or vacuum cleaners in a glass cabinet could compete with that, even if they are a hard-hitting social commentary on consumerism or whatever…
Despite my love for the bears, I’d say Room 2 was more interesting overall. The first thing we saw was a classical-style bust depicting Koons and his first wife, porn star and politician, Ilona Staller, whose breasts – skilfully reproduced here in sugary white marble – were the first to be bared on Italian television. Baroque Bust stood out simply because it portrayed something so personal. That’s assuming Koons’s second wife isn’t a bear or a basketball, of course.
Next up was the ‘Easyfun’ series: a set of large coloured mirrors shaped like animals’ heads. The title was half right – trying to guess the species in each case was fun but not always easy for someone like me who grew up in a family that was not big on animals. (The only pets I ever had were a goldfish called James which died before my brain was capable of forming long-term memories, some tadpoles named after Tolkien characters which I kept in a washing-up bowl, and a bunch of ants which met their end when I accidentally left my ant farm in direct sunlight and came back to find the little fellas all motionless and crispy.) So Easyfun proved a bit challenging what with all the ears and tusks and horns and whatever those funny little alien antennae things are that giraffes have sticking out of their heads.
The final piece on display was Caterpillar Chains. Now, I’ll admit that I was a tad dismissive on first inspection. It was the basketballs and hoovers all over again: an everyday object, taken slightly out of context, probably making some statement about society, blah blah blah. I was about to march PB back to my beloved bears when the gallery assistant sidled over and – looking pretty pleased with himself, it has to be said – informed us that the caterpillar, which appeared to be an inflatable plastic toy, was in fact made from aluminium. It might not sound like much and it’s hard to do it justice in words, but the level of detail that had gone into the replication was really impressive – right down to the little air nozzle on the bottom and the standard warning about not being a life-saving device. (Incidentally, those warnings have always baffled me. I mean, if I ever find myself miles out to sea, no land in sight, no hope of rescue, and an inflatable caterpillar comes bobbing past, I’m damn well going to clamber aboard.)
I should note that our enjoyment of Caterpillar Chains was greatly increased by witnessing the reactions of another couple – shit, I used the ‘c’ word… – when they too were told its secret. The woman grabbed her partner’s arm and shouted, “It’s metal! Looks like plastic… But it’s metal! You’d think it was plastic… But it’s not plastic! It’s metal!” She repeated this several times, just in case the guy was still in any doubt as to whether the caterpillar was made from plastic or metal. At this point PB and I decided to make our exit, leaving the pair to marvel at the caterpillar. Which was made of metal. Not plastic.
I really enjoyed the Koons exhibition, though that was probably as much down to PB sharing my childish sense of humour as it was down to the artworks themselves. And unsurprisingly it was the childish art that I liked the most – the dressed-up bears, the shiny animal heads, the fake inflatable. I’m ambivalent about some of his stuff – and still wrestling with the fact that he uses specialists to produce a lot of his art as opposed to making it himself – but I do love the playfulness and sheer fun that Koons injects into his sculptures.
Come to think of it, most people would be hard pressed not to laugh or at least smile at a bear in a waistcoat. Maybe I will have to insist on the Mustard Museum for our next date after all – if PB can find humour there then I’ll be impressed…
Unprecedated 