CULTURE
A Subversive View of Pop Culture By Hillary Latos
O
ne of the most influential and highest paid visual artists of the post war generation, Jeff Koons, is taking over the entire Whitney Museum to display a retrospective culminating 35 years of work from the early beginnings to the present day. With his unique ability to bridge the gap between high and low brow, luxury and mass, artist and celebrity, he became a cult figure himself and has collaborated with pop icons such as Michael Jackson to Lady Gaga to even fast fashion retailer H&M and Dom Perignon. Similar to Warhol’s rise to fame of taking everyday commercial objects and iconic pop culture figures and elevating them from the banal to the exceptional, he too has pushed the boundaries of industrial fabrication with overarching themes, forcing us to examine the culture we live in and art’s place in that culture. Whitney’s Associate Director of Programs Scott Rothkopf remarks, “Koons is widely known as the maker of a handful of iconic objects, but this retrospective will for the first time take the full measure of his art. Never before have so many of his works been on view together, nor has the Whitney ever devoted so much space to a single artist. We felt that it was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the closing of our uptown building with an exhibition of great scholarly rigor that also promises to be a major international cultural event.” This comprehensive look at his incredible body of work exhibits some of his most well known studies starting with the One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank from 1985 which suspends a basketball in a per-
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fect balance of salt and water in a tank which was a monumental task to achieve. His famous works such as Rabbit, Michael Jacson and Bubbles, Made in Heaven, Balloon Dog, Popeye, Inflatables, PreNew, The New, Equilibrium, Luxury and Degradation, Statuary, Banality, Easyfun, Celebration, Hulk Elvis, Antiquity, and Gazing Ball will sit alongside new, never been seen works like PlayDoh in the exhibit. Perhaps his most controversial body of work was Made in Heaven series which depicted nude images of Koons and his former Italian porn star wife Ilona Staller, which critics felt bordered on pornography at the time. While his
most popular and recognized works are his gigantic renditions of colorful childhood objects and icons that represent a childlike innocence like Popeye, Scottish Terrier Puppy Topiary, inflatable water toys, and shiny metallic balloon animals that have even melted the hearts of the most jaded critics. On view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from June 27 to October 19 before travelling to Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. For more information: whitney.org