Week 3 - Artist OTW

Two artists, I found this week are Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama. A dog made of balloons, a pumpkin full of dots, and nothing special, these two works represent the contemporary art market. The two artists who captured both artistry and popularity have one thing in common. The point is that they used self-marketing that deviated from the existing form.

A businessman in art, Jeff Koons

Suppose there's anything unique about Jeff Koons, the 'most expensive artist to exist,' that he experienced 'real business' before becoming an artist. From membership desks at the Museum of Modern Art in New York to financial brokers on Wall Street. It gave Jeff Koons his perspective as a marketer who worked on financing the work. The marketing strategies studied to achieve higher sales rates as efficiently as possible have influenced today's work.

Jeff Koons, dressed in a neat suit, has a bright smile, looks like a business person, and aims for the highest efficiency in his work method. A typical example is setting up a company instead of a workshop and hiring more than 100 employees. Koons himself provides ideas and directs the overall direction, but the actual production is all done by the hands of the staff. Jeff Koons' strategy is to sell the first works among the completed works to famous art galleries or collectors. This is because a considerable marketing effect can be obtained with a single modifier, 'work purchased by a certain art museum/collector.' He is also not shy about noise marketing. When the work <Pink Panther> was submitted at Christie's auction in 1999, Koons mentioned in front of reporters, "Actually, this work is a metaphor for masturbation." When the remarks were reported, interest in <Pink Panther> increased.

In addition, Jeff Koons has been the subject of controversy and interest, such as exhibiting works based on his personal life or holding autograph sessions, which is rare for an artist. He has expressed dissatisfaction with the way he sees himself as a marketer through various interviews so far. But there's no denying that Jeff has excellent marketing skills.

Self-marketing master Yayoi Kusama

In 1957, 28-year-old Yayoi Kusama left Japan for New York. She wanted to break free from the oppression she had suffered throughout her life and expand her art into a bigger world. However, when she arrived, there was a completely white male-dominated art world, and Kusama, an Asian woman, had to face prejudice at every moment. Interestingly, the street performance she chose as a method of resistance soon led to self-marketing.

Yayoi Kusama's performances were always intense. It was a method of engraving her signature polka dots or pouring paint on the naked models on the street in broad daylight. Performances that dealt with topics that fit well with the mood of American society at the time, such as gender liberation and human rights equality, were focused on New York.

Its climax was the Venice Biennale in 1966. Appearing at an uninvited event in a golden kimono, Yayoi Kusama sat down on the lawn with 1500 silver balls and started selling them to passersby. "For two dollars, you can reflect your vanity on a silver ball," she claimed. This selling action was an incident where the artist commercialized her work, and despite the biennale's opposition, it continued throughout her birthplace, causing a stir in the art world. It was an event in which Yayoi Kusama's name was imprinted on both the public and the art world. In collaboration with various global brands, she established herself as 'the best artist loved by luxury brands' and launched a fashion brand under her name.

Jeff Koons and Yayoi Kusama have won public fame with 21st-century self-marketing, but ironically, their works have become representatives of works of art not currently owned by the public. This is because they recorded the 'best auction price among surviving artists' and 'the highest auction price for female artists of all time', respectively. If artists were thinking about new strategies to promote themselves, they are thinking about ways to bridge this gap these days in the art market. 

Jeff Koons' work expresses a highly ordinary object with a smooth stainless steel surface when looking at silver. If you look around on the streets, you will find artworks representing the city in each city. The balloon-shaped works he created feel like they can be located in the center of a large city like New York. It seems to make the work unique so that most people can look at it.

Conversely, many of Yayoi Kusama's works can only be seen in indoor art galleries. Somewhere in the exhibition, we create a concept for each room. Yellow and black pumpkins surround one room. The other is a white room in paint. It seems that she expresses herself in her way using the space of the interior using various colors. When I looked at her work, I didn't feel something simple, but I felt strange when I looked at her job.

Koons' style seems to focus on beautiful outdoor sculptures in the big picture, and Kusama appears to focus on her own space that can be expressed indoors.