Sex and the Rest Part II

On Monday it was sex

 Sotheby’s enlightened and/or entertained a packed auditorium of collectors and dealers when Tobias Meyer, Worldwide head of contemporary art, moderated a panel discussion titled: “Old Masters, New Voices.” The cast was what used to be called in the days of B Movies, a cockpit crew. Representing the megabucks world of contemporary art were John Currin

and Jeff Koons. Victoria Siddall Director of Frieze Masters the London art fair that brings together a tightly edited selection of dealers  in old and new art represented the potential for cross over. Luke Syson, and here we go again with egotistical job titles, the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Curator in charge of the Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Met. was there to represent just that.  He arrived at the Met a year ago following his big success curating the Leonardo da Vinci show at London’s National Gallery.

     This was the set up: Each panel member was asked to chose one painting and talk about why it means so much to him or her. The new art folks had to chose old art; Sysons had to pick someone contemporary. And the winners were:

Currin: Tinteretto’s Susanna and the Elders. Koons: Titian’s “Venus and Adonis” in the Prado. chose another painting in the Prado, “Las Meninas” by Velazquez while Sysons went for Cy Twombly’s “Leda and the Swan.”  Currin and Koons did almost all the talking and an awful lot of it was about penises, nudes (by which they meant naked women) with dollops of pornography. Koons was winning; intelligent, knowledgeable, down to earth and a man enjoying life who sets about aiding and abetting other people to do likewise. It has rewarded him splendidly..all those cute rabbits and hearts have helped him bring paintings by Courbet and Picasso and more into the family home. Sysons choice of Leda and the Swan was yet more sex; only Siddall the only female, choice a painting with a different subject. This led Meyer to the plausible if superficial conclusion that men and women look at art differently. We were led to go home thinking that historically the two subjects of art have been sex and the artists themselves. Funny. Before the panel got going, I played the game of “what would I have chosen?” if I'd been on the panel. Instantly I knew it would have been “The Baptism” by Piero della Francesca. Not sex; not a painting about an artist. Still the event was enlightening and entertaining within limits. And Jeff Koons is a genuine art star even if the same cannot be said of his art.