While Koons acknowledges Chateau de Versailles, and particularly the 'fantasy and control' shown by Louis XIV, as a major influence, not all were equally amused when 17 monumental sculptures made their way into the castle and gardens of Versailles. One could not miss the irony when a small royalist group, the National Union of French Writers, called for a demonstration at the gates.

'Jeff Koons at the Chateau de Versailles' was the first Koons retrospective in Europe, and it would be fair to say that the artist and palace are an obvious match. Less generously, the combination might be called superficial, facile or brash; in short, nothing Koons hasn't heard before. This assessment however does not fairly or adequately describe the visual synergy created by this pairing. Beyond the playfulness, and a healthy dose of disrespect for the sanctity of art and the stability of history's edifices, the combination manages to significantly change the interpretation of both.

Large Bouquet of Flowers (1991) in Marie Antoinette's bedroom is an interesting case in point. Between gold leaf, Rococo painting and floral patterns that cover every square inch of wall, bed, curtain and roof, the Koons sculpture is almost entirely neutralised. Its inclusion, however, does subtly shift the way one views the room, and underlines the deadness of the space. Large Bouquet of Flowers here becomes a commemorative wreath that makes its surrounds cheap and fake, a kitschy middle-class notion of luxury. Chateau de Versailles becomes Trump Towers, bringing the numerous copies that high-Baroque spawned to converse, with their long-lost origins in a heavy accent, about the real or imagined difference between 'popular' taste and 'high' art.

New Hoover (1981-1987) in the queen's antechamber, is a particularly interesting installation. The shiny machines in their immaculate Perspex boxes emanate light, like holy grails of domesticity and consumerism. Against the background of royal portraits in gilt frames, portraying a particular privileged class, New Hoover seems to point at how 'liberty, equality, fraternity', the rallying cries that sought to replace Versailles' excess, have been debased into equal access to consumer goods.

There is nowhere quite like Versailles to speak about class, taste, artificiality and fantasy, and our society's need to endlessly consume. The Koons works thus displayed benefit greatly from the location, Versailles breathing new energy into even the over-exposed. Of course the decontextualisation of art and edifice is often problematic, but there are no victims here. As curator Elena Geuna Laurent Bon put it, '(A)bove all, this unique event seeks to inspire reflection on the contemporaneousness of our historic monuments...'.

Opens: September 11 2008
Closes: January 2009

Chateau de Versailles
Chateau de Versailles, Place d'Armes, Versailles, France
Tel: 33 (0) 130837800
Email: direction.public@chateauversailles.fr
www.chateauversailles.fr
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