One might be inclined to suspect that the vociferous critics of this project—including an obscure organisation calling itself The Society of French Authors and several patriotic columnists—were on Jeff Koons’s payroll. They created the element of ‘outrage’ essential to complete the sense of Koons’s work: outrage against taste, against the integrity of French culture, even against the proud heritage of Marie Antoinette! Allegations of corruption also surrounded the exhibition, since the director of Versailles’ public projects is a close associate of Koons’s chief collector who owns many of the works exhibited here, most notably the rarely seen huge floral outdoor sculpture Split Rocker (2000). Yet despite the media circus, there is nothing very controversial about this exhibition. Curiously, most of the works—no new pieces, rather a selection from the 1980s on—look decidedly at home in this Baroque palace rather than creating any sense of décalage (radical disjuncture) as proposed by French critic Jean Clair.
The consonance is at both the formal and thematic registers: overblown and over decorated, representing wealth, privilege, power, not to mention hedonism, banality and frivolity, all accompanied by an emphatic sense of being out of touch with the everyday realties of its audience. This is not to damn the exhibition: in fact, Koons’s work has rarely exuded more meaning than here. It is doubling rather than countering the Rococo effect—by placing Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988) in the Salon de Venus or Balloon Dog (Magenta) (1994-2000) in the Salon d’Hercule, for example—that packs the punch. For one, the exhibition engenders a sense of devil-may-care fun and silliness totally in keeping with the spirit of the last courts of the French monarchy before the bloody end. But