Jeff Koons’s latest achievement: a new standard in prolix, complacent, solipsistic, muddled drivel

Jeff Koons is, by measures understood in Wall Street, the most successful living artist. But he’s a slick brand manager rather than a tormented creative soul. The Koons brand includes a stainless steel bust of Louis XIV, a red aluminium lobster and balloon dogs, plus countless knock-offs of novelty-store dross.

It is tempting to think Koons a vulgarian and condemn his art as crapola, but to do so would be lazy. There’s no point in criticising him for his cynical exploitation of the credulous art market, since that is exactly his intention. Futile to damn him as vacuous; he’d be flattered.

All artistic achievement can be assessed in terms of skill, talent and genius. Koons has very little technical skill: his work is made by production-line assistants. He stands back from the process and the product. Duchamp? Warhol? Oh yes, we have been here before. The great Robert Hughes said that, so far as a sculptor’s skills were concerned, Koons would have difficulty carving his name on a tree.

But he has talent and genius in abundance. The sheer nerve of seeing through such a vast amount of derivative tosh is in itself a source of admiration and fascination. Early on, he was a tribute-groupie of the first generation of Pop Artists. Then he evolved into a very clever impresario of re-manufactured tat. Is it kitsch to reproduce kitsch? That was a recurrent question as, suppressing the gag reflex, I leafed through this book.

I want to be careful not to dismiss him entirely. Who is to say whether the industrialised high finish of a Koons balloon ‘sculpture’ will not one day be seen with the same affection that we now accord Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro or Van Gogh’s impasto? Koons’s crass one-liners might be an articulate commentary on our troubled civilisation. Ilona Staller, a comely Italian stripper who was briefly his wife, muse and well-publicised model, was his La Fornarina, his Simonetta Vespucci, his Hendrickje Stoffels.