The news that Jeff Koons has returned to Gagosian feels like a realigning of the planets. There may be troubles in the outside world but the rapprochement between two late 20th-century art-world behemoths shows that things can always return to how they should be. Rakewell can’t help feeling sorry for everyone involved if Kenny Schacter’s reports on why Koons has gone back to Larry are true. Apparently, Pace wouldn’t keep up with the funds Koons required for his ‘Meissen-inspired sculptures’. Rakewell, of course, would not be waylaid by such materialistic worries and is, instead, left wondering about the aesthetics of such a return. Everyone loves a reunion – just look at Oasis – but perhaps we should be turning our attention to more visual concerns.
There are many archetypes an artist might fall back upon when considering comebacks. But is there a more apt work than Norman Rockwell’s Homecoming (1924)? The painting of a man being greeted by his loyal dog with a lick of the face, carrying his bulging suitcase with a Grand Hotel sticker on the end, depicts someone who has travelled and enjoyed luxuries abroad but realises that there really is no place like home.
If a more soulful attitude is what you’re after then perhaps the painting that best sums up the idea of returning home is the 19th-century Dutch artist Anton Mauve’s The Return to the Fold. A flock of sheep, guided by shepherd and sheep dog in earthy colours conjures thoughts that relate not just to finding the right direction but also to being on the right spiritual path. In New York, where Andy Warhol’s mantra of ‘Good business is the best art’ overshadows much cultural output, Rakewell can’t help but feel that the subtext of The Return to the Fold offers a nice sentiment but is not quite the right lens through which to appreciate this particular change in relations.
Perhaps, instead, we must examine a biblical source. Is this new business arrangement nothing more than a reenactment of the story of the Prodigal Son? In Rubens’s take on the parable, the barn is full of fatted calves and there’s no doubt the feast will be full and joyous. Rakewell suspects that this is exactly how Larry and Jeff are feeling.
