Versailles ‘Welcomes’ Koons

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Jeff Koons, whose sculptures sell for up to $25.8 million, baffled visitors to the Palace of Versailles as he displayed his steel rabbit, balloon dog, and hanging lobster in the chateau’s grandest rooms.

“Jeff Koons Versailles,” which opened Wednesday and runs through December 14, presents 16 monumental sculptures inside the ornate palace, and one in the gardens. A few dozen French protesters demonstrated outside the gates, calling the show disrespectful to French heritage.

“It would never be my intention in any manner to be involved in a dialogue which is disrespectful, even to one person,” Mr. Koons told a crowd of reporters. “I’m so grateful for the opportunity to show in Versailles. I have complete respect for Versailles, and I have respect for each individual that’s coming to Versailles.”

Asked why he showed his works in the palace’s main galleries, rather than a separate wing, he said, “These are the salons that really were the most public.

“It just seemed appropriate, because the work wants to be engaged. It wants to participate in a dialogue,” he said.

Outside the gates, a rowdy circle of mostly elderly French demonstrators gathered around a dark-suited speaker, Arnaud-Aaron Upinsky, who said he represented the Union Nationale des Ecrivains de France (National Union of Writers of France), and accused the organizers of violating Versailles.

“This is like a burglary,” said Mr. Upinsky, mispronouncing Koons’s last name before the bemused gathering. “They want to replace Louis XIV with Jeff Koons. They want to replace France with the United States.” Mr. Upinsky then pulled out balloons marked with names that rhymed with Koons and popped them one by one.

One demonstrator was 60-year-old Nicole Rigault, a retired upholsterer who had come from Paris especially to bemoan “the horrors being put in a chateau that represents France.”

“He can have an exhibition anywhere he wants, but not at Versailles,” said Ms. Rigault. “This is not art. Art involves history, research. To blow up balloons and put them here and there, no.”


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