Art, and Handbags, for the People

A Story by liker

AMONG THE IMAGES inscribed on Jeff Koons’s consciousness is a black-and-white photograph of the legendary art dealer Leo Castelli presenting a bronze Jasper Johns flag to President John F. Kennedy. For Mr. Koons, the moment was a watershed. “People from film, music and other areas of the arts have always participated in the popular culture,” he said. “But before that time, the fine arts had been neglected.”

Mr. Koons, now 59, has in fact dedicated much of his three-decade career to making sure that visual arts get their fair shake. Canny self-promotion and the sensational nature of the work itself have ensured that his kitsch-imbued vacuum cleaners, outsize children’s playthings and copulating couples impress not just art-world insiders but the public at large.

Which goes some way toward explaining why Mr. Koons was mingling on a rainy night last week in a crowd that included the actress Olivia Wilde, the model Alek Wek, the blogger Leandra Medine and the British musician Birdy at the opening of H&M’s store at Fifth Avenue and 48th Street.

“I want my work to be accessible to people,” said Mr. Koons, dapper in his navy blue H&M suit. Mothers and daughters, college students and young professionals, he predicted, would be among those to pounce on his contribution to the retailer’s inventory: a $49.50 handbag with a six-inch reproduction of his monumental balloon dog. (The $58.4 million original is on view in a survey of the artist’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art.)

Image:pink bridesmaid dresses

That limited-edition bag, already priced from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars (for artist-signed pieces) on eBay, is but the latest in an outpouring of artist/fashion collaborations to have filtered into the marketplace. In recent memory, these have included such high-profile partnerships as Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince, each with Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton; Raf Simons and Sterling Ruby at Dior; and Riccardo Tisci and Marina Abramovic at Givenchy.

But in joining hands with H&M, Mr. Koons has lent this time-tested marketing gambit a democratic twist. No longer the exclusive province of the luxury arena, such artist/retail partnerships have now trickled downward, with the aim, it seems, of lending fast fashion a whiff of class and cultural clout.

“These high street brands don’t really have a face we associate with the artistic director of a luxury brand like Vuitton,” said Mitchell Oakley Smith, the author, with Alison Kubler, of “Art/Fashion in the 21st Century.” “Perhaps this is a way of imbuing the mass brand with a personality and point of difference.”

Earlier this year, whether to lift sales or consumer awareness, Uniqlo joined with the Museum of Modern Art to create a collection of T-shirts embellished with images of works by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jackson Pollock, among others; Gap teamed with the Frieze Art Fair to sell tees printed with images by Richard Phillips, Alex Katz and Yoko Ono; and Junk Food, a Los Angeles apparel maker, licensed work by Mr. Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose iconic crown tag was stamped on black T-shirts sold at Urban Outfitters.

“It was inevitable that the mass market would pick up on the idea of artist collaborations,” Ms. Kubler said, “but it is an interesting test of their relevance.” Luxury alliances like Vuitton and Mr. Murakami lift the stature of both artist and brand, “but in the mass market,” she added, “the message can be harder to get across.”

If such ventures have little immediate impact on a merchant’s bottom line, they can profit the artist immeasurably. A handful of years ago, Jeffrey Deitch, Mr. Koons’s former dealer and a friend, anticipated this phenomenon, telling The New York Times that such partnerships are “just one of the avenues available to the artist who wants to get his message to the public.”

The assumption, of course, is that the public knows the name. Or if, as in the case of Mr. Koons, “they do not know the man, they know the iconic things he has done,” said Daniel Kulle, the president for North American operations at H&M. “People are more well informed than they used to be.”

Still, to an art-enamored public, the matter may be moot. “Even if an artist is unknown,” Mr. Smith said, “in that commercial context, who he is and what he does matters less than just that he is an artist.”