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Elvis Presley takes a break from shooting G.I. Blues at Paramount Pictures Studios to meet with princesses Margrethe of Denmark, Astrid of Norway, and Margaretha of Sweden (l-r). June 11, 1960. New York Times published an article about this meeting on June 8th : HOLLYWOOD, Calif., June 7 — European and Hollywood royalty met today and neither group was fazed. In the Hollywood phase of their journey the Princesses saw two movies being filmed at Paramount and met Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley and Juliet Prowse. It has also been reported that the Scandinavian Princesses visited Dean Martin’s birthday party on the set …
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Elvis Presley takes a break from shooting G.I. Blues at Paramount Pictures Studios to meet with princesses Margrethe of Denmark, Astrid of Norway, and Margaretha of Sweden (l-r). June 11, 1960.

New York Times published an article about this meeting on June 8th :

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., June 7 — European and Hollywood royalty met today and neither group was fazed.

In the Hollywood phase of their journey the Princesses saw two movies being filmed at Paramount and met
Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley and Juliet Prowse.

It has also been reported that the Scandinavian Princesses visited Dean Martin’s birthday party on the set …

Sergelstorg Stockholm Cutting Board Design Barbro Tryberg after Jörgen Kjærgaards famous black and white triangle pattern for Sergels square Stockholm 1960 Stockholm’s Culture Festival 2010 will start Tuesday 10th of August and end on Sunday 15th. The cultural life in Stockholm will explode during this late summer week.
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Sergelstorg Stockholm Cutting Board Design Barbro Tryberg after Jörgen Kjærgaards famous black and white triangle pattern for Sergels square Stockholm 1960

Stockholm’s Culture Festival 2010 will start Tuesday 10th of August and end on Sunday 15th. The cultural life in Stockholm will explode during this late summer week.

Michael Jackson and Bubbles At The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art Oslo Norway Jeff Koons b. 1955, York, Pennsylvania, USAlives New York City Michael Jackson and Bubbles was made for the Banality exhibition and mounted by three important US and European galleries simultaneously! The sculpture, in white and gilded ceramic with hand-painted details, is larger than life and seems enormous given the sentimental genre it refers to. The work is based on a found photo of the pop star with Bubbles, his pet chimp, on his lap. The composition was first modelled in clay, a mould was taken and finally four ceramic copies of the sculpture were cast. To do the actual work, Koons looked for the most highly skilled craftsmen around; it was a move which took issue at the same time with a middle-class penchant to judge artistic merit on the basis of the craftsmanship. Koons himself actually undermined this point in part when he admitted that none of the work had been done by the master himself. On a base strewn with gilded flowers, the two are rendered as pallid, not very dissimilar ceramic figures; witness the prominent black eyes and exaggerated red lips on both. The chimp’s expression seems quite human and he does bear a resemblance with his master – or is it the other way round? Whatever, they are immortalized as cultic or sacred personalities in an idealized state. The size of the work accentuates its fragility. A monumental work like this should be viewed with respect, pondered and, perhaps, even venerated, like representations of beings populating a super-human realm. The hyper-realistic approach and the finely graded tints evoke magnificently the fragility of the biggest contemporary stars. The situation depicted in the work deals, of course, with society’s idolatry and the ever-newsworthy and increasingly surreal media narrative of Michael Jackson’s personal comings and goings. He is possibly the prime example of the type of glamorous, eccentric, tragic and, as Koons so elegantly evokes, equivocal lives of the glitterati, and invites several interpretative possibilities. Koons has made a portrait reflecting reality and fantasy. His immortalization of the superstar bears witness to a principled artist who applies an extremely materialized aesthetic to seductive ends, but also to challenge public prejudice and conceptions of art. The Banality series is possibly the least homogeneous series of all, but the work ties in with the other works of the series, as indeed with Koons’s work overall, in the sense that they all seek a dialectic between ‘high’ and ‘low’, between the everyday and the fantastic, the banal and the sublime, the concrete and the conceptual.
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Michael Jackson and Bubbles At The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art Oslo Norway

Jeff Koons

b. 1955, York, Pennsylvania, USA
lives New York City

Michael Jackson and Bubbles was made for the Banality exhibition and mounted by three important US and European galleries simultaneously! The sculpture, in white and gilded ceramic with hand-painted details, is larger than life and seems enormous given the sentimental genre it refers to. The work is based on a found photo of the pop star with Bubbles, his pet chimp, on his lap. The composition was first modelled in clay, a mould was taken and finally four ceramic copies of the sculpture were cast. To do the actual work, Koons looked for the most highly skilled craftsmen around; it was a move which took issue at the same time with a middle-class penchant to judge artistic merit on the basis of the craftsmanship. Koons himself actually undermined this point in part when he admitted that none of the work had been done by the master himself.

On a base strewn with gilded flowers, the two are rendered as pallid, not very dissimilar ceramic figures; witness the prominent black eyes and exaggerated red lips on both. The chimp’s expression seems quite human and he does bear a resemblance with his master – or is it the other way round? Whatever, they are immortalized as cultic or sacred personalities in an idealized state. The size of the work accentuates its fragility. A monumental work like this should be viewed with respect, pondered and, perhaps, even venerated, like representations of beings populating a super-human realm. The hyper-realistic approach and the finely graded tints evoke magnificently the fragility of the biggest contemporary stars. The situation depicted in the work deals, of course, with society’s idolatry and the ever-newsworthy and increasingly surreal media narrative of Michael Jackson’s personal comings and goings. He is possibly the prime example of the type of glamorous, eccentric, tragic and, as Koons so elegantly evokes, equivocal lives of the glitterati, and invites several interpretative possibilities. Koons has made a portrait reflecting reality and fantasy. His immortalization of the superstar bears witness to a principled artist who applies an extremely materialized aesthetic to seductive ends, but also to challenge public prejudice and conceptions of art. The Banality series is possibly the least homogeneous series of all, but the work ties in with the other works of the series, as indeed with Koons’s work overall, in the sense that they all seek a dialectic between ‘high’ and ‘low’, between the everyday and the fantastic, the banal and the sublime, the concrete and the conceptual.

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