LACMA to pay $25 million for a giant train-shaped phallus masquerading as "sculpture".

Next year, Jeff Koons's latest affront to art may be hanging in front of the Los Angeles County Museum. Museum director Michael Govan generously committed a $20 million dollar appropriation LACMA received from Los Angeles County to pay the world's greatest hack to create the world's biggest artistic folly.

According to The Art Newspaper, the $25 million commission is the most expensive ever by a museum.

I despise Jeff Koons. He is, without question, one of the most overrated, egotistical "artists" ever to gain super-stardom in the art world. Not only does he not "produce" the "work" he "creates", but he doesn't actually "create" anything. His work is all created by master craftsmen he hires, and his "concepts" are all mundane attempts to imbue common objects with "meaning". (And this is not even an original concept ... Duchamp, Warhol, etc. already covered this territory).

For his latest project, LACMA's Govan commissioned artist Jeff Koons to create a life-sized replica of a locomotive suspended from a crane.

"Mr. Koons imagines periodic chugging noises. "It will be absolutely so authentic a performance of a train," he said, that it could fool "an engineer who’s worked on a train his whole life." [NY Times]

Ooh, I just got a hard on.

"Mr. Govan compared the project to the Eiffel Tower, expressing hope that the piece would become a landmark for Los Angeles. “The beautiful thing,” he said, “is that we would see it from the 10 freeway and from downtown." [NY Times]

The Eiffel Tower ... Are you fucking kidding me? Apparently not.