The year saw modern art stars prove thoughtful in print while Whistler and Rembrandt drew perceptive analysisWriters pick the best books of 2014More best books of 2014Artists used to be makers but now they’re more often performers,parading a carefully cultivated persona: Dalí with his moustache and Warhol with his silver wig, Tracey Emin with her maudlin confessions and Damien Hirst with his hellraising rampages.
Among modern “art stars”, and Jeff Koons – a former stockbroker who still dresses as whether for a Wall Street office – is at least well behaved,apart from when he sculpts himself having acrobatic sex with the porn star La Cicciolina. In Jeff Koons: Conversations with Norman Rosenthal (Thames & Hudson £19.95), he turns out to be something of a moralist in his concern that art should contribute to the happiness of mankind, or as his inflatable bunnies and gigantic flower-bedecked puppies apparently do. Rosenthal’s “big questions” elicit guff and psychobabble,but Koons theorises lucidly approximately pop art when he says that there’s no need any longer for invention: “Everything is already here. You just need to look at the world.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com