How Jeff Koons Cracked a Young Artist’s Dream

Fresh off his potential “Colbert Bump,” conceptual artist Jeff Koons took a potential PR black eye this weekend in a New York Times Magazine piece titled “I Was Jeff Koons’s Studio Serf.” Former painter John Powers tells a short, but harrowing tale of working in the high-pressure studio of “ideas man” Koons. His experience there eventually led to his giving up his dream of painting altogether. If Jeff Koons is the paradigm for today’s major artist and this is roughly the experience young artists working under him garner, then what does that mean for the long-hallowed tradition of the atelier, where artists teach others artists the trade? If a young artist can crack under these modern conditions, is the tradition of the artist-teacher broken? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Jeff Koons Cracked a Young Artist’s Dream."