Canadian Art

• Home
• Online
• Reviews

Skin Fruit: Of Trophies and Trustees

In general, major museums avoid exhibiting private collections as such, unless they are promised as gifts to the institution. In these recessionary times, however, such ethical niceties seem suspended: this spring, the New Museum mounted a show from the holdings of trustee (and Greek megacollector) Dakis Joannou, curated by superstar artist Jeff Koons—himself rather indebted to Joannou, who owns 48 of his works. The exhibition’s promotional materials and catalogue lacked any of the usual acknowledgements of private and corporate sponsorship, leading one to wonder exactly who paid for this glorification of Joannou’s shopping habits. As most published accounts of the show noted, conflicts of interest hung around “Skin Fruit” like an albatross.

Robert Gober Corner Bed 1986/1987 1987 Courtesy the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art

And what did we get in return for this breach of the public trust? Unsurprisingly, Koons’ selections gravitated towards the spectacular, the figurative and the sexual, although the only work of his own he included—the classic basketball in an aquarium, One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank of 1985, reportedly the work that sparked Joannou’s collecting mania—came off as fairly demure, abstract and chaste. Other works clamoured more desperately for the viewer’s attention. Roberto Cuoghi’s supersized Assyrian amulet Pazuzu, a grinning demon with outstretched wings, towered nearly 20 feet high and overshadowed the entire fourth-floor gallery. It even dwarfed Charles Ray’s Fall ’91, an eight-foot-tall department-store mannequin that would have looked positively uncanny in other circumstances, but here seemed a little defeated. Only Robert Gober’s Untitled—a waxwork man’s leg sticking out from the wall and dangling a fleshy anchor that terminated in a balletic pair of little-girl’s feet clad in white sandals and blue socks—managed to radiate a compellingly psychological creepiness.

In fact, waxworks and mannequins predominated, so much so that “Skin Fruit” began to recall Madame Tussauds. Like the displays at that popular entertainment, the works in the exhibition rewarded the viewer with a momentary frisson, a faint thrill at “getting it”—although, instead of the recognition of a stiff celebrity effigy, the payoff was an identification of nominal artistic meaning, a rather short-lived satisfaction at a smorgasbord of such similarity. Even the best examples of the genre, such as David Altmejd’s The Giant—a nine-foot-tall hollow man of fake fur sprouting crystals and riddling holes through which squirrels crawl—or Maurizio Cattelan’s Now—John F. Kennedy, dead in a casket and alone in a darkened room like an ironic, if still somewhat eerie, shrine of a saint—suffered from a debilitating sameness in this context, which levelled everything to facile sensationalism.

Andro Wekua Sneakers I 2008 Courtesy the DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art

Interesting questions, such as why a brand of grotesque figuration has become the favoured trophy art of the rich and powerful, remained unanswered by “Skin Fruit.” (The suggestion in the exhibition’s press release and catalogue that it has something to do with the idealism of classical Greek sculpture is, to say the least, unconvincing.) Likewise, the question of why the New Museum would sell its once-scrappy soul in order to present high-priced schmaltz went unaddressed. We may not expect more of a modern Maecenas, but we deserve better from our public institutions.

Jeff Koons One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank 1985 Courtesy the Dakis Joannou Collection

Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.