The Selling Point of Each Artist: The Jeff Koons Retrospective and Pommes Frites

Pommes Frites isn't a ordinary fries that you could eat in NYC, but a special shop where you could have Belgian fries with 30 different kinds of sauces. The fries are super fat and crispy and the sauces are rich and interesting. I had a regular one with roasted garlic mayo and Vietnamese pineapple mayo on. My fries have been wrapped with paper cone that has New York drawing on. After tasting the fries, I realized that Pommes Frites doesn't sell authentic Belgian fries or double cooked and gluten free frites, but sell the taste of the extraordinary sauces. Think about it, there are millions of shops and restaurants selling fries but there are few shops selling fries with a variety of sauces. And the names of the sauces, Pesto Mayo, Pomegranate Teriyaki Mayo, Dill Lemon Sauce, Bordeaux Wine Mayo, are just so intriguing that you cannot resist to try them out. That's the selling point of Pommes Frites.

Yesterday, I went to watch the Jeff Koons Retrospective at Whitney Museum, which has been considered as the most controversial and expensive American artist of the past three and half decades. Jeff Koons is well known for reproductions of banal objects such as ballon animals, vacuums, plastic flowers...

The Ballon Puppy 

At the first glimpse, the superficies made me feel empty. The visitors were contemplating in front of the giant ballon puppy produced in stainless steel and I was so curious about what they were thinking with the dog. Koons' sculptures and paintings looked new and shine. The plastic texture misled me into a unrealistic space where everything could be float and hang. When you see one of those massive retrospective, it overwhelms you with its size and presence.

The Inflatable Flower

I kept thinking that why he became so successful in New York. After comparing to the exhibitions I've seen at Met, I found that Jeff Koons is doing something quite unordinary. The traditional living artists are just focused on their painting techniques or art itself, so they couldn't make a lot money from it as far as there aren't people appreciate their arts as they do. On the other hand, Jeff Koons starts from the impossible objects and uses his perfectionism. I barely could find the single seam that showed how the piece has been made. The money he spent on creating them must be enormous. That's why he can charge six to seven figure of his artworks other than any artists.

The Cake, 1999

I guess both frites and balloon puppy are not necessarily needed in daily life but why do people love to talk about it, go visit it and even buy it? That the uniqueness draws people's attentions will connect them with the thought of feeling special.