Justine and the Boys and Charlie Finch

Justine and the Boys, a 1979 film shot by Robert Polodori and the performance artist Colette. It stars, among others: Colette’s alter ego Justine, a young Richard Prince, an even younger Jeff Koons.

By BIANCA BOVA August 7, 2025

            I didn’t have the opportunity–or until my teenage years, at least, the wherewithal–to read much of the late critic Charlie Finch’s work as it was being published. Finch was the New York correspondent for Coagula; a contributor to the early-internet iteration of Artnet News; and, in the 1980s, host of Artbreaking, an art-focused talk radio program broadcast on New York’s WBAI 99.5FM. The first line–the first line!–of his obituary in the New York Times (he died by presumed suicide in 2022) reads, in part, as follows: “[Finch] shook up the New York art world for years with gossipy, often caustic writing.” That every critic should be remembered as such.

            It is Charlie Finch who directed my attention to Justine and the Boys, a 1979 film shot by Robert Polodori and the performance artist Colette. It stars, among others: Colette’s alter ego Justine, a young Richard Prince, an even younger Jeff Koons, and the art critic Alan Jones. I came across Finch’s review from 2002, penned on the occasion of the film’s release on YouTube, on one of many late night scrolls through the Walter Robinson-era Artnet News archives. It was compelling enough that I convinced a friend to allow me to invite myself over to watch it (not having a TV set myself). We ran it in the B-movie position of a double-feature alongside Plaster Caster, the documentary chronicling the iconic Chicago sculptor Cynthia Plaster Caster’s career. It’s a pairing I recommend.

            The film was shot in Colette’s Living Environment, the immersive, additive, parachute silk-based installation that from 1972-1983 overtook the Pearl street loft the artist lived in in Lower Manhattan. It opens on a twenty-four year old suit-wearing Jeff Koons, who, in the official description of the film on the artist’s YouTube channel is credited as “Jeff Koons (boyfriend at the time).”  Koons, who was then in the beginning of his brief career as a commodities broker on Wall Street, is tying his shoes and flipping casually through a magazine as he sits perched on the side of an aqua blue, silk-draped, and slowly filling bathtub. Colette-as-Justine traipses in in full regalia to wordlessly hand Koons a bottle of beer and descend something other than fully clothed—high heels on, tits out, hats on hats—into the tub. She begins to prattle on about the difficulties of her day, drifting off in half sentences while occasionally divesting pieces of her costume into the bath where Koons silently, solicitously fishes them out, discarding them to one side on the carpet.

            A moment of respite in this half-coherent soap opera occurs when the phone rings, and Koons, in no hurry to pick it up, answers with a pointed “Um, we’re busy?” before repeating himself, and hanging up. He grinningly informs Justine he doesn’t know who it was, just “he said an ex.” Whether or not the phone call was staged does not matter much. There’s no meaningful demarcation of reality here. The acting–if any is being attempted–is inarguably bad. No one is trying to prove any thesis, no one is overextending their talent or overexercising their faculties. It’s a rare moment of absolute sincerity insofar as: it’s whatever. 

Robert Polodori and Colette

    Finch’s review of the film is a teardown. When one is merited—when anything resembling a redeeming quality is totally absent from a work—it can be a gratifying critical form to read. Though it’s almost ambitious in its utter lack of effort, Justine and the Boys is so grating in its execution, it meets this criteria without argument. What makes Finch’s review not just satisfying, but compelling is its lack of measure. For some unfathomable reason it seems he has taken the film’s vulgar disregard for quality personally. He deems it “the most irritating art film of all time,” and declares “The whole effect is akin to watching some D-list actors try out for a 1950s vampire film.” Still he gives Koons and Prince (who plays Justine’s husband, and is, per Finch, “dressed like a riverboat gambler” while doing so) the benefit of having “a touch of James Dean about them, when dodging the pratfalls of their untalented companions.”

            This is not to roundly discredit Colette’s work. In her time she was deservedly front and center in the scene, designing clothing lines for Fiorucci and making work for the opening of Danceteria. She’s also received her late-career due in the form of exhibitions at Company Gallery which served to reestablish and conserve portions of her Living Environment, and the venerable Mitchell Algus Gallery. All this while she’s still around to see it, too, which is more than plenty of artists are fortunate enough to be able to say for themselves.

            Nevertheless, Justine and the Boys remains, as Finch points out, nothing but a “headache-in-waiting.” That it didn’t seem to damage the credibility of the careers of its participants (one hesitates to say “actors”) is more a testament to the films’s inconsequence than to their respective careers’ resiliencies. 

Near the film’s end, Alan Jones, in the role of an art dealer, gives a walkthrough of the Living Environment to a small, well-heeled group of collectors. A woman in the group, who reaches out to inspect the walls with performative, tire-kicking flare, pronounces it a “just a gimmick.” This does not deter the young tuxedo-clad man who inquires after the price of a work from writing a check for $37,000 to Jones for it on the spot, before the group decamps for lunch.

“How much is the artist?” Asks another member of the group, from behind his sunglasses, as they begin to shuffle out.

“I’m sorry,” answers Jones, “She’s already sold.” WM