Jill Krementz covers Jeff Koons at the Whitney

The Whitney's last hurrah uptown.

Jeff Koons, A Retrospective
June 27-October 19, 2014
Whitney Museum of American Art at 75th and Madison

Jeff Koons, (b. 1955), is one of the most influential and controversial artists of the 20th century.

He is also one of the most expensive at auction.


	Jeff Koons's Split-Rocker is on view at Rockefeller Plaza. The installation is not related to the Whitney exhibit, but simply concurrent.

Throughout his three-decade career, he has pioneered new approaches to the readymade, tested the boundaries between advanced art and mass culture, challenged the limits of industrial fabrication, and transformed the relationship of artists to the cult of celebrity and the global market.

Yet despite these achievements, Koons, amazingly, has never been the subject of a retrospective surveying the full scope of his career.

Comprising almost 150 objects dating from 1978 to the present, the Whitney show — organized in a chronological narrative, allows visitors to understand Koons's remarkably diverse output as a multifaceted whole.

This exhibition is the 59-year-old artist's first major museum presentation in New York, and the first to fill nearly the entirety of the Whitney's Marcel Breuer building, and the outside sculpture court, with a single artist's work. It will also be the final exhibition to take place there before the Museum opens its new building in the Meatpacking District in 2015.

Jeff Koons: A Retrospective, organized by Scott Rothkopf and Laura Phipps, Senior Curatorial Assistant, is accompanied by a hefty, fully-illustrated $65 catalogue. Warning: Don't drop it on your toes.

Jeff Koons: A Retrospective is organized by Scott Rothkopf, with the assistance of Laura Phipps, Senior Curatorial Assistant.

On Sunday, June 29th, at 6 p.m. in the lower gallery, Koons will have a conversation with Scott Rothkopf and Rachel Kushner; $8 general admission and $6 for seniors.

The exhibition travels to the Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris (November 26, 2014 - April 27, 2015) and to the Guggenheim Bilbao (June 5 - September 27, 2015).

For Tuesday afternoon's press preview at 1:30, the line was winding around the block at 1:15.

Jessica Dawson, an art historian, writes for The Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, and The Daily Beast.

The Post's Barbara Hoffman.

On hand to greet us in the lobby:
Kiepenkerl, 1987
Stainless Steel

Inflatable Flowers (Four Tall Purple with Plastic Figures), 1978
(partially refabricated 2014); Vinyl, mirrors, and plastic

Lifeboat, 1985
Bronze

Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Dr. J Silver Series), 1985
Glass, steel, distilled water, sodium chloride reagent, and three basketballs

The stillness of this gravity-defying basketball continues to surprise viewers nearly thirty years after its debut. Koons could have created the effect by submerging the ball in a viscous liquid such as silicon, but he insisted on using water in order to maintain the purity of the sculpture and his viewer's trust in it.

In consultation with the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman, Koons realized that by first filling more than half the tank with a solution of highly refined salt and distilled water and then filling the ball itself with distilled water, the ball would float on the heavier substance; he then poured more distilled water into the top portion of the tank. This precise equilibrium, however, does not last forever.

Temperature fluctuations and vibrations from viewers' footsteps blend the solutions of water, ultimately causing the ball to sink. For Koons, the inevitability of this failure provides the work's theme of perfect balance with a poignant counterpoint of instability.

Jim Beam – J.B. Turner Train, 1986
Stainless steel and bourbon

Left: Gazing Ball (Belvedere Torso), 2013.

Right: Gazing Ball (Farnese Hercules), 2013.

Both statues are fabricated from plaster and glass and are on view in the lobby.

Also in the lobby: New Hoover Convertibles Green, Red, Brown, New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon Displaced Doubledecker, 1981

Four vacuum cleaners, acrylic and fluorescent lights.

Parkett Signature Plate, 1988
Porcelain

Press conference at 2 p.m. where we were jammed in like sardines.

Whitney Director Adam Weinberg welcomes everyone to the press preview and acknowledges all those who helped with the massive undertaking, most especially the artist himself.

Alain Seban, President of the Centre Pompidou, where the Koons retrospective will travel in November, stands beside Jeff listening to Adam Weinberg's remarks.

Koons approaches the podium to the noise of a hundred cameras clicking.

Erin McCracken, Arts and Entertainment Reporter, and Kate Penn, Photographer, with the York Daily Record/Sunday News.

Paula Camillo writes for Lanciatrend, an Italian magazine.

Hugs, hugs.

Koons gives a thumbs up to curator.

My assistant, Maria Escalante, in the museum's courtyard with Popeye, 2009–12
Granite and live flowering plants

Woman Reclining, 2010–14
Granite and live flowering plants

The vitrines on lower level contain magazines, early drawings, lithographs, portfolios and other ephemera. While you are there, you might want to try the Whitney's wonderful restaurant serving my favorite New York hamburger.

Made in Heaven, 1989
Lithograph billboard mounted on canvas

In 1989 the Whitney invited Koons to create a billboard for Image World, an exhibition exploring the relationship between art and the media. By this time, Koons had become one of the most famous young artists in the world, but he still felt art had a limited reach compared to the entertainment industry and imagined that making a film, titled "Made in Heaven," would further increase his renown.

For his costar, Koons sought out Ilona Staller (also known as La Cicciolina), a celebrity porn star who also held a seat in the Italian parliament. Koons traveled to Italy and contracted Staller to pose with him on her own sets and be shot by her manager and frequent photographer Riccardo Schicchi.

Here Koons presents himself as a romantic lead, clutching Staller's lingerie-clad body while staring at the camera and, he seems to imagine, his legions of adoring fans. Installed on the streets of lower Manhattan, the billboard represented a particularly brazen, perhaps parodic, form of self-promotion at a time when artists such as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat increasingly appeared in the mainstream press.

Although Koons never realized the film, the billboard launched one of his most important bodies of work.

Ariella Budick, the New York based art critic for the Financial Times, with her husband, Justin Davidson.

Dan Bisschoff, The Star-Ledger.

Rabbit, 1986
Stainless steel
On the left, Armond White, film criic at National Review.

The metal sculptures of Statuary, on display in this gallery, says Koons, "have a permanence to them, they maintain a non-divisible sense of life, of continuity."

This contrast is embodied in the form of the inflatable rabbit, which first appeared as a vinyl readymade and returns here cast in stainless steel. By transforming this ephemeral disposal object into a durable and precious one, Koons questions the values by which we distinguish art from other things. It has been compared to the Playboy and Easter bunnies, a helmeted spaceman, or an orator wielding a microphone.

The fact that the rabbit's head reflects and distorts those who observe it, further suggests that the source of its meaning lies in all of us.

Doctor's Delight, 1986
Stainless steel

Film Critic Daryl Chin and Larry Qualls, art writer.

Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988
Porcelain

Rendered larger than life in gilded porcelain, this sculpture is based on a publicity photograph of the late pop superstar Michael Jackson and his beloved pet chimpanzee, Bubbles. When the work was made, Jackson was arguably the most famous entertainer in the world, and Koons admired him as the epitome of mainstream appeal, just as the artist's own celebrity was reaching new heights.

"If I could be one other living person," Koons remarked at the time, "it would probably be Michael Jackson." Koons praised Jackson as someone willing to do "absolutely anything that was necessary to be able to communicate with people." In Koons's eyes this included plastic surgery and skin-lightening procedures that he claimed Jackson undertook to reach more middle-class white audiences. "That's radicality. That's abstraction," Koons said.

Detail of Michael and his monkey.

With his ivory skin tone and rosy cheeks, the sculpted Jackson hints at this transformation as well as at the fraught entanglement of celebrity, money, and race in the United States. The work's composition is indebted to Michelangelo's Pietà (1498–99), in which Christ lies on the lap of Mary after his crucifixion, an association that suggests the extent to which Pop stars sacrifice themselves for fans who shower them with an almost religious adoration.

String of Puppies, 1988
Polychromed wood

Pink Panther, 1988
Porcelain

Bear and Policeman, 1988
Polychromed wood

Installation view with Saint John the Baptist, 1988 (Porcelain) and Buster Keaton, 1988 (Polychromed wood) in the foreground.

Naked, 1968
Porcelain

Performa's Roselee Goldberg, just back from Basel and like me, a newbie first time grandma.

Self-Portrait, 1981
Marble

Writer Robert Greskovic bedecked in skull & daisies print pants and a Pink Panther cyclist shirt by Comme des Garçons.

Lee Rosenbaum, journalist, critic and author of the popular, award-winning CultureGrrl blog.

Large Vase of Flowers, 1991
Polychromed wood

This work appears on the cover of the exhibition catalogue.

Violet Ice (Kama Sutra), 1991
Glass Edition

In this sculpture Koons presents himself and Staller, his wife at the time, as an idealized emblem of beauty and romance, straight out of the annals of art history or of Hollywood's storied lovers. To make the piece, the pair posed in rapturous embrace while being photographed from all angles.

In a gallery devoted to Easy Fun, you can see an assortment of 1999 sculptures made from crystal and mirrored glass combined with plastic interlayer and stainless steel. Shown here: Bear (Gold) and Kangaroo (Red).

Elephant, 2003
Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating

On the wall: Lips, 2000
Oil on Canvas

Andrew Russeth (Senior Editor at The New York Observer) with Phyllis Tuchman. Ms. Tuchman has curated a Robert Motherwell show opening at East Hampton's Guild Hall on August 9th.

Trust me ... .they aren't kidding.

Wall Relief with Bird, 1991, Polychromed wood

This is the only non-porno piece in the small room.

Collectors Stefan Edlis with his wife, Gael Neeson, purchased the piece at their right in the mid '90s. They live in Chicago and Aspen.

The piece on the right? It's Bourgeois Bust – Jeff and Ilona (1991; Marble).

Photographer Angela Pham, wearing House of Holland, works for Billy Farrell Agency.

Louise Nicholson, Contributing Editor for Apollo, the 100-year-old UK art magazine.

A portrait by JK (as in Jill Krementz) of art critic Jason Kaufman contemplating the other JK (as in Jeff Koons.)

That's three JK's in one.

Photographer Todd Eberle, formerly with Vanity Fair, has been working with Jeff Koons on a photographic project for 17 years.

Eberle's current gallery show exhibition, Flowers For Richard, is on view at The National Exemplar/ 381 Broadway. The show is a tender ode to his long-time partner, Richard Pandiscio, with whom he has lived since 1987 — in Chelsea and in West Cornwall, Connecticut. The flower bouquets, on which the photos are based, were assembled from the garden designed by Mr. Pandiscio (former art director of Paper magazine) for their Connecticut residence.

Collector Maria Bell wearing her Koons silver rabbit pendant.

The silver rabbit has also been transformed into a bracelet by Stella McCartney, collaborating with the artist, as well as into a Helium balloon by Koons that debuted at the 2007 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Hanging Heart (Violet/Gold), 1994-2006

I overheard a collector saying "If you're going to have a heart on it might as well be a purple one."

I think i heard right, but it's a better and funnier double entendre this way.

Scott Rothkopf, collector Maria Bell, Senior Curator Donna De Salvo, and artist Marc Dennis ("I'm a painter amongst these collectors.")

In the background: Play-Doh, 1994–2014; Polychromed aluminum

In contrast to the perfect smoothness and largely monochromatic palette of many sculptures in Celebration, this one represents an enormous craggy mound of Play-Doh. The material is one of the first that American children use to make simple artworks, and Koons remembers his son proudly presenting him with a Play-Doh sculpture. unveiled here for the first time.

For Koons, Play-Doh represents "a very joyous, very pop material" while serving as a monument to childlike imagination.

Noa Celis, 14 months, keeps her eye on the prize as she makes tracks away from Play-Doh toward Balloon dog.

Balloon Dog (Yellow), 1994–2000
Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating

Despite its ten-foot stature and one-ton weight, Balloon Dog (Yellow) uncannily conveys its ephemeral source. Koons worked with a specialized foundry in California to cast and finish the work's sixty separate precision-engineered, stainless steel parts. He stipulated not only that the outside of the sculpture should capture the curves and puckers of a balloon dog but also that its inside suggest the free circulation of air, as if it were actually fashioned from a single balloon.

Koons imparted Balloon Dog (Yellow) with an air of innocent playfulness as well as elements that suggest sexual orifices and protuberances. He has hinted at the sculpture's darker themes by comparing its form to a Trojan horse, the giant wooden gift that the Greeks bestowed on their Trojan enemies, while Greek soldiers lurked inside. Like all of the Celebration sculptures, Balloon Dog (Yellow) is one of five examples in different colors, lending each version a unique character and distinct emotional charge.

My moment of reflection.

Left: Lobster, 2003; Polychromed aluminum and coated steel chain.
Right: Elvis, 2008.
Foreground: Seal Walrus (Chairs), 2003-9.

Elvis, 2008
Oil on canvas

Hulk (Organ), 2004–14
Polychromed bronze and mixed media

Hulk (Organ) conjoins an Incredible Hulk inflatable toy machined in bronze and a functioning organ. The exaggerated masculinity of the Hulk is one of the key themes of the Hulk Elvis series, and for Koons the figure represents "both Western and Eastern culture and the sense of a guardian, a protector."

The organ is itself a masculine symbol, not only because of its explosive phallic pipes, but also because it is known as the "king of instruments," a reference to its complex and, often, overwhelming sound. In fact, when the organ is played, this sculpture emits a deafening, belligerent sound akin to a race car engine.

The concentration and accumulation of these references make the sculpture a paragon—and perhaps also parody—of machismo.

Phoebe Hoban has recently published her biography of Lucian Freud.

Dogpool (Panties) 2003
Polychromed aluminum, acrylic, chromoceneric print, and coated steel chain

Gorilla, 2006-11
Granite

A very young photographer, Evelyn Cho, will be five on July 11th.

Evelyn checking out the results of her labor.

Evelyn with her mom, Sunny Chiang (correspondent for Taiwan's La Vie).

Liberty Bell, 2006–14
Bronze, wood, wrought iron, cast iron, steel, and polychrome

Growing up in south central Pennsylvania, Koons first encountered works of art and cultural artifacts in the museums and public spaces of Philadelphia. One such object was the storied Liberty Bell, which dates to the 1750s and has served as a symbol of the American Revolution, abolitionism, and even the fight against communism during the Cold War.

Koons explains that his interest in the bell stems from its history not only as an icon of freedom and independence but also as an object that has been shaped by many hands.

Detail of Liberty Bell.

Koons undertook extensive research into the bell's materials and measurements, including a 3-D scan performed in situ, in order to create an exact replica of how it appeared when installed in Philadelphia's Independence Hall in the 1950s and 1960s, when the artist saw it as a child.

This sculpture represents one of the first times that he has created an "altered readymade" in the very same materials as the original.

Installation view: Boy with Pony, 1995-2008
Oil on canvas

Stephen Soba, senior press officer for the Whitney.

Deborah Solomon and her WNYC producer, Gisele Regatao. Solomon's biography of Norman Rockwell is a Pen finalist.

A very happy artist.

Jill Krementz covers Jeff Koons at the Whitney

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