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Koons’s linking of refinement with debasement recalls Joan Didion’s closing comment in her essay on the Getty Villa, which, she says, serves as “a palpable contract between the very rich and the people who distrust them the least.” Tacky and overt signs of luxury are for the poor. Tasteful, subdued…

The company had another ad in the same series, a similar couple, good-looking young professionals, reading different parts of a newspaper that is spread over the floor in some kind of magnificent domicile, huge and unfurnished. Trying to decode what kind of space it is, I’m reminded of a comment in…

“I assume you drink Martell,” the attractive virago with shining white eyes says. I remember this ad.

I’m thinking in particular of the series Luxury and Degradation, which features exact reproductions, in oil on canvas, of liquor advertisements that were contemporary when Koons made them, in 1986. The paintings pair well-known slogans—“I could go for something Gordon’s” and “I assume you drink Mar…

The year before the Costa Concordia fell on its side and killed thirty-two people, it starred in a movie. Jean-Luc Godard’s Film socialisme has gambling and a brunch buffet, frantic disco, the banter of history, vanished gold, Palestine. Shot in HD, the footage transforms the enormous cruise liner …