Art Review | A Panoramic Backdrop for Meaning and Mischief

A balloon dog. A chocolate heart wrapped in shiny red. A silhouette of Piglet from a “Winnie the Pooh” coloring book. These are the subjects of three glossily lacquered, stainless steel works — all previously unexhibited — by the Pop artist Jeff Koons now on view in the Cantor Roof Garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo: Librado Romero

From: The New York Times
Author: Ken Johnson
Published: April 22, 2008

With its breathtaking, panoramic views of Central Park and the Manhattan skyline, the Cantor Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art may strike you as an excellent place to mount a seasonal outdoor sculpture show, which it does every year. In truth, it is an inhospitable site for sculpture, as demonstrated by the 2008 display that opens on Tuesday: three wonderful, previously unexhibited works by the celebrated Pop artist Jeff Koons. Each of these sculptures is a greatly enlarged, glossily lacquered, stainless-steel representation of something small: a toy dog made of twisted-together balloons; a chocolate valentine heart wrapped in red foil, standing en pointe; and a silhouette of Piglet from a “Winnie the Pooh” coloring book, randomly colored as if by a small child.

They are mischievously meaningful works. With its pneumatic, sausagelike parts, “Balloon Dog (Yellow)” is a sly Trojan Horse: it seems innocent but is loaded with aesthetic and erotic perversity. “Sacred Heart (Red/Gold)” acidly comments on the commercial debasement of emotional and religious experience. “Coloring Book” reflects the youth-obsessed infantilism of modern culture and society.

Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog.

But placed on the architecturally nondescript patio, where there are also shaded areas for patrons of the Roof Garden Cafe, the sculptures too easily turn into benign, decorative accessories.

The biggest problem is scale. Seen in an indoor gallery, the elephantine, shiny metallic “Balloon Dog (Yellow),” which rises to 10 feet at its highest point, would have a weirdly imposing, slightly menacing presence. On the roof it appears dwarfed by the vast sky and by the open expanses of space to the south and west of the museum.

The intimacy of Mr. Koons’s sculpture is also diminished. Perfectionist attention to detail is one of his work’s most compelling aspects: note the exactingly formed knot that serves as the balloon dog’s nose, or the folds, pleats and stretch marks in the heart’s wrapper. The distracting outdoor environment, though, discourages careful, contemplative looking.

Jeff Koons, Sacred Heart.

Because it is both the biggest and the simplest, the 18 ½-foot-tall “Coloring Book” is the least undermined by its environment. But it is also the least interesting formally, being little more than a flat, irregularly contoured slab whose colors are thin and watery.

Jeff Koons, Coloring Book.

Their setting aside, Mr. Koons’s sculptures remain intellectually and sensuously exciting — “Balloon Dog” is a masterpiece — and they are worth visiting under any circumstances.


Related Links:
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Jeff Koons Official Web Site
- Interview With Jeff Koons (Journal of Contemporary Art)
- Jeff Koons's Biography (Gagosian Gallery)

Exhibition | Pain as an Art Form

Selections from the Pain Exhibit. To see a slide show, click here.

From: Pain as an Art Form

Author: Tara Parker-Pope

Date: April 22, 2008

Pain doesn’t show up on a body scan and can’t be measured in a test. As a result, many chronic pain sufferers turn to art, opting to paint, draw or sculpt images in an effort to depict their pain.

“It’s often much more difficult to put pain into words, which is one of the big problems with pain,” said Allan I. Basbaum, editor-in-chief of Pain, the medical journal of The International Association for the Study of Pain. “You can’t articulate it, and you can’t see it. There is no question people often try to illustrate their pain.”

Frida Kahlo, The Broken Column

One of the most famous pain artists is Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, whose work, now on exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is imbued with the lifelong suffering she experienced after being impaled during a trolley accident as a teenager. Her injuries left her spine and pelvis shattered, resulting in multiple operations and miscarriages, and she often depicted her suffering on canvas in stark, disturbing and even bloody images.

Sacramento resident Mark Collen, 47, is a former insurance salesman who suffers from chronic back pain. After his regular doctor retired due to illness, Mr. Collen was struggling to find a way to communicate his pain to a new doctor. Although he has no artistic training, he decided to create a piece of artwork to express his pain to the physician.

“It was only when I started doing art about pain, and physicians saw the art, that they understood what I was going through,” Mr. Collen said. “Words are limiting, but art elicits an emotional response.”

Mr. Collen wrote to pain doctors around the world to solicit examples of art from pain patients. Working with San Francisco college student James Gregory, 21, who suffers from chronic pain as the result of a car accident, the two created the Pain Exhibit, an online gallery of art from pain sufferers. The images are evocative and troubling.

“Some of them are painful even to look at,” Dr. Basbaum said. In November, he included an image from the site on the cover of Pain; it can be seen here.

Finding ways to communicate pain is essential to patients who are suffering, many of whom don’t receive adequate treatment from doctors. In January, Virtual Mentor, the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, reported that certain groups are less likely to receive adequate pain care. Hispanics are half as likely as whites to receive pain medications in emergency rooms for the same injuries; older women of color have the highest likelihood of being undertreated for cancer pain; and being uneducated is a risk factor for poor pain care in AIDS patients, the journal reported. 

Robert S. Beal, Broken People

Some of the images from the Pain Exhibit, like “Broken People” by Robert S. Beal of Tulsa, Okla., depict the physical side of pain. Others, such as “Against the Barrier to Life,” convey the emotional challenges of chronic pain. “I feel like I am constantly fighting against a tidal wave of pain in order to achieve some quality of life,” wrote the work’s creator, Judith Ann Seabrook of Happy Valley in South Australia. “I am in danger of losing the fight and giving up.”

Judith Ann Seabrook, Against The Barrier To Life

Mr. Collen said the main goal of the exhibit is to raise awareness about the problem of chronic pain. However, he said he hopes one day to find a sponsor to take the exhibit on tour.

“People don’t believe what they can’t see,” Mr. Collen said. “But they see a piece of art an individual created about their pain and everything changes.”

To see a slide show of selections from the Pain Exhibit, click here, or visit the Web site to see the full gallery of photos. Another slide show from The Times in February features art created by migraine sufferers.

Related Links:

- Pain Exhibit

- Pain Exhibit Slide Show

- Migraine Art Slide Show

- Health and Wellness – Well Blog (The New York Times)