Exercise 3.7: Write a paragraph on a single work by Koon’s according to what you understand of the simulacrum. (400 words)

Jeff Koons – Ballon Dog (Orange), 1994-2000, stainless steel with transparent colour coating, image via http://www.publicdelivery.org, (retrieved on May 15, 2021);

Jeff Koon insists in his numerous interviews that there is “no hidden meaning” in his artworks, saying, “Art doesn’t happen inside the object, it happens inside the viewer”. He believes art is a transcendent experience, and everyone should be not critical. Art is inclusive; that is why he doesn’t like the notion of “kitsch” and “never sees his works as kitsch”; He is one of the most famous and successful Neo-Pop living artists. His Balloon Dog sculpture was sold at Christie’s in 2013 for USD 58,405,000. The Balloon Dog is a part of Celebration série of his creations which included other large scale sculptures of balloon dogs in magenta, yellow, blue colours;
“The Simulacrum is never what hides the truth -it is a truth that hides the fact there is none. The simulacrum is true” -Ecclesiastes;
I picked up this artwork for the exercise because I think the Ballon Dog is an excellent example of simulacra: the balloon dog is a popular, if not widely accepted, a symbol of joy and celebration. Someone once did the balloon dog at someone’s kid’s party. This experience-object sign has been infinitely copied, making it an ultimate attribute of celebration, the universal sign of joy and happiness. Celebration in human reality also exists with specific attributes (in this case, ballon toys) about which we agreed as symbols, our representations of our joy. We share our happiness via bringing those attributes. We feel joyful watching those attributes – signs, we need them and seek them to feel festive, which is the simulacra. Symbols represent/substitute/create our social reality, our social experience. As Baudrillard writes (Simulacra and Simulation, 1994): “the Simulacrum is never which conceals the truth- it is the truth which conceals there is none”. So why on Earth we should think that the truth of absolute joy is a balloon dog? There is no objective truth behind this object, but yet we find it as it does mean joy and does bring us celebration. Because after endless usage of this toy in the unstoppable stream on TV and other Social Media, a new hyperreality has been created where we all live hugging the ballon dog at our birthday parties. Our whole celebration experience is intensified if we have specific “joyful” attributes available to us.

Below is a continuation of my notes about Baudrillard’s book “Simulacra and Simulation”.
In Jean Baudrillard’s writing “Simulacra and Simulation” the “Implosion of meaning in media” chapter is very important. I put some notes from this chapter below.
(page 79); “We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning’.
Baudrillard considers the problem of meaning=signification in three dimensions. First, as he points to the fact that the meaning of information is lost in and by media, he says (page 79): “Despite the efforts to reinjecting message and content, meaning is lost and devoured faster than it can be- reinjected.’ Media are “failing” to pass and distribute the meaning, because they are “broken down into innumerable individual cells of transmission” and “The loss of meaning is directly linked to the dissolving, dissuasive action of information, the media and the mass media”.
Or he says “information has nothing to do with signification” and exists on its terms as a separate, independently functioning structure.
Or, “the information is directly destructive of managing and signification, or that neutralises them. The loss of meaning is directly linked to the dissolving, dissuasive action of information, the media, and the mass media”;

Bibliography:

1. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation,1981, published by Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1994; accessed online on May 5 – May 10th 2021;
2. Editors of Whitney Museum of American Art, Jeff Koons: A retrospective, June 27-Oct 19, 2014, on http://www.whitney.org (accessed online on May 10,2021);
3. Editors of The Art Story, Neo-Geo- History and Concepts, online on http://www.theartstory.org (accessed online on May 11th, 2021);
4. Emma Brockes, “Jeff Koons: People respond to banal things -they dont accept their own history”, July 5th, 2015, online on http://www.the guardian.co.uk, (accessed online on May 15 2021);
5. Jeff Koons on Ballon Dog, 2014, interview, Christie`s YouTube channel, (accessed on May 15th, 2021);
6. Robert Storr, January 22, 2018, Jeff Koons interview: “Some people certainly think that my work is kitsch, but I never see it that way”, online on http://www.independent.co.uk, (accessed on May 15, 2021);