Jeff Koons: A Retrospective
Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art
Jeff Koons is perceived to be a controversial artist – an iconic one that proves to be hard to by-pass.
This retrospective zeros in on the thirty-five year spanning career that is firmly based on the reconceptualisation and reimagination of mundane everyday objects and images that have become omnipresent in the world of pop.
What makes Jeff Koons’ work stand out is that it is not merely l’art pour l’art but that his oeuvre is essentially subversive and questions the status quo that we have accept to be reality.
Full-colour photographs and illustrations are depicted en detail along with photos and sketches documenting the genesis of some of his more prominent works, showing how they have evolved from exhibition to exhibition.
What makes this tome a resource for both connoisseurs, the uninitiated as well as the critical voices who have been questioning Koons’ work is not only the well-written, insightful essay that Scott Rothkopf contributed about his eclectic career, but also the other elaborations from scholars from different disciplines, be it from the literary or the worlds of academia and of course art, that examine Koons’ artistic process and tackle it from different angles.
A beautiful, insightful retrospective on a unique, contemporary relevant artist, whose approach to art pays homage to a variety of courses, including Dadaism, pop art and surrealism.
