Supreme Gift: for Jeff Koons

On 20 August 2014, Canadian Neoist and performance artist Istvan Kantor (a.k.a. Monty Cantsin) entered Jeff Koons’ retrospective at the Whitney Museum in New York City where he splattered a white gallery wall with a bloody X before being escorted out of the building by security. In SUPREME GIFT – for Jeff Koons—a manifesto accompanying the action—Kantor presents the celebrity artist with the gift of his own blood. The action of spraying his own blood on a museum wall and the manifesto are part of the ongoing Blood Campaign initiated in Montreal in 1979. Kantor explains that the main objectives of Blood Campaign have been to finance the operations of Neosim, a subcultural network of experimental performance and media artists. In SUPREME GIFT – for Jeff Koons, Kantor continues to address issues of art-stardom, art as a commodity, and the consequences of radical performative interventions in contemporary art institutions.