Jeff Koons: A Retrospective

New York these days is showing off more Jeff Koons to see than you can actually handle at these temperatures. Not only the Whitney Museum lets us witness the largest retrospective ever, even infront of the Rockefeller Center you can marvel at an eleven meter-high-rocking horse made of flowers plus thanks to the infamous photographer Annie Leibovitz, who portrayed the artist for the current issue of the American “Vanity Fair Magazine”, we all know now, how the artist looks like naked from the front and the back, today, by the age of 59. Namley pretty and in good shape.

Since June, the dark, characteristic Marcel Breuer Building on Madison Avenue shows the whole 35 years of the artists making. The curator Scott Rothkopf arranged a chronologically, frugal selected and surprisingly modest show, which leads into Koons self centered cosmos and shows that the artist at an early stage deals with sujets he picks up again in his later work.

Jeff Koons is known for using products of consumer culture as starting points and alienates or imitates them. He works mostly with objects from the fine art, industrial products and advertising. Especially the latter always takes back to sexual cues. His artworks mostly convert because of their ironic effect between kitsch and context. Koons counts according to an auction in 2013 of the piece “Balloon Dog” (Orange) for 58.4 million dollars at “Christie’s” in New York, as the most expensive living artist in the world.

The people who don´t like the artist´s perfectionist fetish objects, will not be convinced to the contrary by this exhibition. Koons fans, however, will largely enjoy the loud and shrill show at New York’s Whitney Museum.

Hennessy, The Civilized Way to Lay Down the Law//oil inks on canvas 

© Jeff Koons//Edition of 2 plus AP,1986

JEFF KOONS: A RETROSPECTIVE
JUNE 27th – October 14th, 2014

Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street, New York, NY 10021

Text: C.Klaue