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Why was that? As a rule, art grabs the popular imagination in either of two ways. One is to offer crescendos of feeling, real or simulated. That explains the long lines for any show billed "Van Gogh" or "Pollock." And in the '80s that partly explained the otherwise inexplicable fame of Schnabel, whose big, slapdash canvases seemed contrived for no greater purpose than to proclaim his muscular intention to proclaim muscular intentions. The other route an artist can pursue is to borrow from readily understood sources in pop culture. That would describe Basquiat's graffiti-derived gestures and Koons' life-size renditions of Michael Jackson and the Pink Panther. Even if you don't know about Basquiat's debt to the scribble paintings of Cy Twombly or Koons' connection to Marcel Duchamp, you know what graffiti and the Pink Panther are. You have a way in.
But the art world of the '80s expanded exponentially because it produced a more aggressively commercial breed of artist and dealer. How different that was from the decade before, with its monastic retreat from the marketplace. Steeped in the directives of '60s radicalism, many artists of the '70s wanted nothing to do with making deluxe commodities to be traded around in the capitalist gallery system. They deliberately moved into practices--performance art, installations, earthworks--that left behind very little that could be hung on some rich guy's walls. It was an approach that a lot of artists returned to in the '90s.
To put it mildly, the biggest names of the '80s had no such compunctions about money. Koons, a former commodities trader, publicized his 1988 "Banality" show with color-photo magazine ads that showed him on a pony being fed cake by a model in a bikini--the artist as king of the world. In another he was cavorting with pigs. Thinking back on that ad now, Koons has a simple explanation. "I thought I would call myself a pig before the viewer could, so they could only think more of me," he says. And anyway, he has had the last laugh. He turned out to be one of the most successful artists to emerge from the '80s. His 1992 Puppy, a 43-ft.-high dog made of flowering plants, is probably one of the most widely seen outdoor works of our time. He's at work on a project called Train for a site in Paris where a crane will suspend a locomotive steam engine 80 ft. above the ground, with its nose pointed straight down. At least once a day, while hanging in midair, it will chug into action for about five minutes. You might think of that as a good metaphor for cultural exhaustion. He says no. "The moment we live in is a great time to make art," he says. "We have different technologies to play with, and we're left with the opportunity to focus on our work."