Too much art in my bag, Jeff Koons?

Do we like to walk down the street with the Mona Lisa hanging from our arm? To have a work meeting with a Gauguin on the table or have a beer with Monet's water lilies on our lap? We are not referring to canvases or wooden panels of seventy by a meter with heavy nineteenth-century frames. We are talking about carefully crafted prints on some precious accessory or light garment that we wear. Jeff Koons says yes. The world's most valuable living artist and exceptional communicator defends his latest collaboration with Vuitton, called Masters, like no one else. A series of bags that have transcendental works of Art history printed on their precious leathers.

In countless interviews, Koons declares that "a bag is a great communication platform, an ideal medium to bring art to the street." Because he believes that part of his mission as an artist is to eliminate elitism, the hierarchies of Great Art. "Art is never the goal; it is the object's ability to tell us what we can do to expand our lives. These bags fulfill that function." With his designs for Vuitton, he says he has created "special objects that transmit emotions because they tend to celebrate humanity."

But what would Gauguin, Da Vinci, or Monet say? They already lived in an era when fabrics were stamped; the world has changed a lot, but not in everything. Such personalities would have their own opinion on the matter. A canvas two meters nineteen centimeters wide depicting a lake overflowing with aquatic flowers – in front of which one perceives space, light, and almost feels the smells – was not conceived to be transferred to a few centimeters of folded calfskin. Of course, Mr. Monet did not know about merchandising. That certainly did not exist.

In another line of what the fashion dialect has dubbed "inspirational prints," Loewe has acted. Under the direction of Jonathan Anderson, the Morris meets punk collection has been launched. The young Irish designer who has led Loewe's creativity since 2013 has printed the famous patterns for paper and textile created by William Morris at the end of the 19th century on certain items of the brand.

It seems more natural, less forced, for an indiana projected to cover walls or upholster sofas to go on to stamp pants or bags with their own name. It is not the translation of the portrait of a smiling lady from whom her frame is snatched, the limit of her existence, the perimeter that encloses her world in sfumatto where she has lived for four centuries.

But perhaps none of this matters too much. Perhaps what matters most is the evocative power of the image. That inspiring je ne sais quoi that art gives. And when we are waiting for our late friend with half a beer already drunk and we fondle our precious bag, we ask ourselves things. Like why the French painter who fought with Van Gogh became obsessed with Tahitian women.

Or why a bearded Englishman staunchly defended manual labor, drawing leaf after leaf with pencil and watercolor, linking them with precious delicacy so that they could be repeated ad nauseam without visible cuts to our complacent gaze.

Perhaps so. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the only thing that matters when we go to buy a bag is that it is beautiful. That we liked it at first sight without thinking too much. Or without thinking at all.

And we already know that about tastes...