Koons, Jeff

Jeff Koons

Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons: Four Decades of Art from the Broad Collections

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons presents contemporary art from the private collections of Eli and Edythe Broad, which are among the most important in the world. Featuring works by 22 significant artists, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cindy Sherman, this handsome volume addresses major movements such as American Neo-Dada and Pop, and German Neo-Expressionism, as well as art of the 1980s and current works from California.

An interview with the Broads and scholarly texts addressing important aspects of the collections situate the 160 full-color plates in art-historical context.

Jeff Koons

The Post-Pop superstar: An in-depth study of Koons's entire oeuvre to date Limited to 1,500 numbered copies, each signed by Jeff Koons From kinky to kitsch to conceptual, Jeff Koons's art is anything but conformist. Since he stirred up the art world establishment in the 1980s with his unapologetic basketball sculptures and stainless steel toy blow-ups, Koons has been known as somewhat of a bad boy?a reputation he confirmed in the early 90s via works depicting him having sex with then-wife Cicciolina, the Italian porn star-cum-politician. Following this torrid phase, he changed gears to produce the gargantuan Puppy, the 43-foot tall floral terrier that now resides at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Koons's exploitation of the banal, in the aggrandizement and/or embodiment of kitsch and pop imagery, has become his trademark; detractors may delight in their naysaying, but Koons's work commands millions at auction and his position at the forefront of contemporary art is indisputable. This exhaustive monograph begins with a biographical essay by Interview magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Sischy that puts his work into context and tells his personal story, as well as a text by Eckhard Schneider's analyzing Koons from a European perspective. Arranged in chronological chapters by work groups, the main body of the book features art historian and critic Katy Siegel's detailed analyses alongside hundreds of large-format images tracing Koons's career from 1979 to today. Rounding off the book are an extended bibliography and a lavishly illustrated biography. Fans of Jeff Koons's work will find in this publication not only a sumptuous book-object, but also the most comprehensive study of theartist's work ever published.

Jeff Koons Handbook

Jeff Koons

The man who enshrined a hoover vacuume and a basketball, who created a life-sized polychromed wood replica of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp Bubbles, who transfered his sex life with Italian porn star wife Ilona Staller onto canvas, and who made a monumental topiary sculpture in the shape of a puppy, is back. After a seven-year hiatus from the public eye, bad boy Jeff Koons returns in this comprehensive and overdue survey of his work of the past five years. Three elaborate, highly-produced series are presented, including the joyously effusive "Celebration," an ambitious body of 16 photo-realist paintings and 20 stainless steel sculptures that draw upon the symbols and objects associated with the observance of life's festive rituals.

Jeff Koons: Pictures 1980-2002

The man who enshrined a Hoover vacuum cleaner, who suspended a basketball in a fish tank half filled with water, who created a life-size polychromed wooden replica of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp Bubbles, who transferred his sex life with his then-wife, Italian porn star Ilona Staller (aka Cicciolina), onto canvas, and who made a monumental topiary sculpture in the shape of a puppy, is here given a mini-retrospective in the form of a book. Jeff Koons: Pictures 1980-2002 focuses primarily on the formation and development of Koons's paintings, but, given that he considers his early sculptures to be "three-dimensional paintings," this limit need hardly be considered medium-restrictive. Thomas Kellein's extended interview provides a walloping good tale told by the artist himself. In it, Koons remembers his childhood drawing lessons, his first sale (his father had a decorating business and showroom where he would display and sell his 11-year-old son's art), his experiences at art school, his courtship with ex-wife Cicciolina (they fell in love after he hired her to make his Made in Heaven series), and how the birth of his son inspired his Celebration series, all the while sharing his philosophies on art. Organized chronologically and with an extended biography and bibliography, Pictures presents each of the main works from Koons's painting series from 1980 to the present.

Jeff Koons & Andy Warhol: Flowers

What a lush garden! Imagine the berserk beds that could sprout Koons' polychromed wood begonias next to Warhol's Matisse-adrift-on-Monet silkscreened petunias. This smart volume plants Koons' mostly sculptural exploration of the flower motif alongside a history of Warhol's serialized prints and drawings of the same from the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Jeff Koons (Supercontemporanea)

Jeff Koons: Easy Fun-Ethereal

Pop master Jeff Koons offers up a glittery vision of a world distilled from media images and exploded onto canvas. The collage-like paintings in Koons's Easyfun-Ethereal series combine such bizarrely varied items as cold-cut sandwiches with smiley faces, women's manicured feet in fancy shoes, gooey pastries, and landscaped backdrops. Food and female sexual symbols figure prominently in this series of paintings, flying pieces of canned corn layered with floating red mouths and shiny eyelids. And while the erotic nature of food has a long history, e.g. tales of aphrodisiacs like oysters, there is something unnerving about the sexualization of Cheerios and melted American cheese. The book includes an essay by art critic Robert Rosenblum expounding on the references embedded in Koons's work. Rosenblum discusses pop imagery taken from childhood objects and art historical influences ranging from baroque and rococo to pop, abstract expressionism, and surrealism. An interview with Koons himself reveals some of his more personal relationships with his process and work. For Jeff Koons fans this is a must-have. --J.P. Cohen

For his recent series of work entitled Easy Fun-Ethereal, Jeff Koons employs new computer technology to merge populist icons into desktop collages, which he then transforms into traditional oil paintings rendered with photorealist precision. Drawn from glossy magazines and advertisements, the imagery includes smiley-faced sandwiches, spiraling roller coasters, succulent lips and abstract juice splashes. These hybrids of fun and fantasy simultaneously celebrate childhood pleasures and adult sexual desire: in keeping with Koons's stated intention to "communicate with the masses," the cheerful works are accessible to all. Accompanying an exhibition of seven large-scale paintings commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, this lively volume features 40 full-color reproductions. Art historian David Sylvester's interview with Koons puts forth the artist's perspective on his career to date, while Robert Rosenblum's essay provides an in-depth analysis of the technique and imagery employed in EasyFun-Ethereal.

JEFF KOONS: ANNOUNCEMENT FOR "POPEYE"