Last year was unforgettable for Koons, getting a massive retrospective at the Whitney, preparing to install his balloon sculptures at the Louvre, lecturing at the Frick, has Jeff Koons, taboo, rebel artist, become a regarded name in the art world.
At 59 and with 35 years of career, he was the artist chosen by Whitney Museum to the farewell exhibition in the old building. This exhibition was he’s first major museum presentation in New York, it filled almost the entirety of the Whitney and it was the most expensive exhibition of the history of the museum, that will move to the Meatpacking District in 2015.
Monumentality is the perfect word to describe the identity of Jeff Konn’s work, which is consider as one of the most controversial artists of our era. There is plenty of controversy about Jeff Koons with cartoon characters or the child’s imagination that are evolutionary synthesis of their work.
Koons is widely distinguish for enlarged objects such as Puppy and his huge sculptures of inflated balloons, he also presents a series of paintings, prints, and collage, stating that he tries to make a something that anybody could enjoy. The artist explores concepts such as, eroticism, consumption over innocence, or superfluous, a child’s imagination, what is to be famous. In everything that he does it always seems to have an implicit question: “is this art? ”
His career is characterized by his pioneer approaches to the readymade, he challenged the concepts of advance art and mass, he took industrial fabrication to another step, and satirizes the relationship of artists and the cult of celebrity in the global market. Almost 150 objects dating from 1978 were presented, the Whitney exhibition was the most extensive display to the artist’s revolutionary work.
This exhibition will be at the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris (November 26, 2014–April 27, 2015) and at the Guggenheim Bilbao (June 12–September 27, 2015).
Jeff Koons’s success wasn’t indifferent to the giant Swedish retailer, H&M, who invited the artist to design a museum-inspired flagship store on Fifth Avenue.