Shiny dime-store sundries writ large seems to be Koons’s default mode. Cheap inflatable toys cast in metal and repainted to achieve playful illusionary impact, enshrined appliances, gilded baroque mirrors, colossal tchotchkes: these are unmistakably the forms and characters that make up the cultural mythology of America’s consuming class. Like a contemporary Praxiteles—the Attic sculptor who famously integrated anatomical realism and classical ideals— Koons idealizes the forms and the virtues that constitute the belief systems and collecting habits of an entitled sector of society. By heightening the gloss, increasing the scale, or upgrading the medium of an array of consumables, Koons, convincingly, and most pleasurably, reinforces the principle that personal happiness is to be found in the beauty of material possession.

Koons traffics in refining first-world goods and middle-class standards. His sources reflect a narrow ideology of American materialism. And when his works are all seen together—as they are in this venue—they seem entirely out of step with postmodern notions of pluralism and decentralized truth, so much so that this exhibition careens in excess and indulgence. Does Koons’s enduring appeal not betray a residual desire for the monumental, for tangible sites of truth during an epistemological diaspora that corresponds roughly to Koons’s career? In fact, I would argue that the only thing that saves Koons (and his supporters) from a purely hegemonic perspective is his (their) celebrity status, the ultimate middle-class aspiration, which in the exhibition essay Bonami trumpets thus: “If art were a religion Jeff Koons would be its pastor.” This is true, but materialism is also religion, and Koons could certainly qualify as its high priest. "Jeff Koons" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' October 2008 Table of Contents.