Jeff Koons Gazing Ball

Hailed by Peter Schjeldahl in The New Yorker as “the most original, controversial, and expensive American artist of the past three and a half decades,” Jeff Koons has come to reign as a master of the market, a wry puppeteer with a “formidable aesthetic intelligence.” His elaborate, exquisitely produced sculptures draw from a contemporary lexicon of consumerism—often featuring large-scale reproductions of toys, household items, or luxury goods—while simultaneously holding up a mirror to the very culture from which they are extracted. These references to popular media are evidenced not merely in his choice of subject matter but also in his visual techniques: his sculptures frequently comprise smooth, mirrored surfaces, and his paintings employ bright and saturated colors. Jeff Koons: Gazing Ball—the first catalogue on the artist’s work to be published by David Zwirner—was produced on the occasion of the major 2013 exhibition at the gallery in New York, which marked the world debut of his Gazing Ball series, a brand new body of work that occupies an important place in the trajectory of his practice. Conceptually derived from the mirrored ornaments encountered on many suburban lawns, including those of Koons’s childhood hometown in rural Pennsylvania, every sculpture is anchored by a blue “gazing ball” of hand-blown glass. These are situated atop large, white-plaster sculptures that have been alternately modeled after iconic works from the Greco-Roman era, including the Farnese Hercules and the Esquiline Venus, or after such quotidian objects from the contemporary residential landscape as a rustic mailbox, a birdbath, and an inflatable garden snowman. Created in close collaboration with Koons, this elegant publication echoes the classic design of a 1970 Picasso catalogue that the artist admires. Inside, vivid color plates of the sculptures in situ capture the stark contrast between the pristine whiteness of the plaster and the highly reflective spheres. In their perfect contours and smooth, glistening surfaces, the gazing balls implicate audience as well as context—mirroring both and offering playful yet powerful meditations on the dialogue between gaze and reflection. “While all of the sculptures are grounded in their own distinct narratives, derived from Art History and suburban towns,” writes Francesco Bonami in his catalogue essay, “the seemingly fragile and delicate gazing ball establishes that sense of uncertain equilibrium that exists between history and fantasy, magic and materiality, mass culture and exclusive beauty.”

With over 200 illustrations of iconic works as well as preparatory studies and historic photographs, this book offers fresh insight into Koons’s polarizing and influential career.

This publication offers an unparalleled opportunity to appreciate the development of the artist's work as it unfolded over nearly seven decades, beginning with his early academic works, made in Holland before he moved to the United States in 1926, and concluding with his final, sparely abstract paintings of the late 1980s.

Artists have long been stimulated and motivated by the work of those who came before them—sometimes, centuries before them. Interviews with 120 international contemporary artists discussing works from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection that spark their imagination shed new light on art-making, museums, and the creative process. Images of works from The Met collection appear alongside images of the contemporary artists' work, allowing readers to discover a rich web of visual connections that spans cultures and millennia.

Curated by Koons himself, together with guest curator Norman Rosenthal, this show features seventeen important works, fourteen of which have never been exhibited in the UK before. They span the artist's entire career and his most well-known series, including Equilibrium, Statuary, Banality, Antiquity and his recent Gazing Ball sculptures and paintings. This exhibition will provoke a conversation between his creations and the history of art and ideas with which his work engages. Jeff Koons burst onto the contemporary art scene in the 1980s. He has been described as the most famous, important, subversive, controversial and expensive artist in the world. From his earliest works Koons has explored the 'ready-made' and 'appropriated image', using unadulterated found objects and creating painstaking replicas of ancient sculptures and Old Master paintings which almost defy belief in their craftsmanship and precision. Throughout his career Koons has pushed at the boundaries of contemporary art practice, stretching the limits of what is possible. Exhibition: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK (07.02.-09.06.2019).

Published as an accompaniment to the 2015 exhibition at Gagosian Gallery in New York, this new book depicts Jeff Koons' new Gazing Ball Paintings and the resulting dialogue he creates with artists of the past, from Titian to El Greco, Courbet to Manet. Dealing with the power of artistic gesture, each work, presented here in stunning color, features a blue glass gazing ball that sits on a painted aluminum shelf attached to the front of the painting that reflects both the painting and the viewer. This metaphysical occurrence connects the viewer to a family of cultural history in real time. Through the simple act of placing a gazing ball in front of the images, painting and sculpture are reunited for maximum sensory perception. New essays by Joachim Pissarro and Donatien Grau complete this striking new book.

The definitive survey of Jeff Koons’s Hulk Elvis paintings, including an extensive interview with the artist in his studio. From the outset of his controversial career, Jeff Koons turned the traditional notion of the work of art and its context inside out. Focusing on unexpected yet banal objects as models for his work, he eschewed typical standards of "good taste" in art, instead embracing what he perceives as conventional middle-class values in order to expose the vulnerabilities of aesthetic hierarchies and value systems. Koons’s declared strategies are to make art beautiful, to strive for objectivity, to give back the familiar, and to reflect, and thus empower, the viewer. The works of Koons’s series Hulk Elvis burst with energy and precision yet mystify with their complex permutations and combinations of figurative and abstract elements. A charged mix of inflatable monkeys, geishas, birds, the Incredible Hulk, and the Liberty Bell jostle against realistically rendered landscapes, gestural paintings, steam engines and horse-drawn carriages, negative silhouettes, and underlying dot screens.

Jeff Koons engages with distinguished art curator Sir Norman Rosenthal resulting in a revealing portrait of the life and art of the most foremost international working artist today Here is what happens when Jeff Koons, one of the most important and controversial artists of the twenty-first century, sits down with distinguished art curator Sir Norman Rosenthal. Published to coincide with his 2014–2015 retrospective, this new book provides the most revealing portrait that exists of Jeff Koons’ singular personality and artistic vision as he discusses works across his thirty-five -year career with his long-time friend and collaborator Rosenthal. Rosenthal’s masterful interviews, conducted over three years, give unparalleled access to the thoughts of one of the most influential minds in contemporary culture, disclosing the artist undistorted and in his own words. As well as examining all his major series in depth, from his first inflatables to his latest series on antiquities, the interviews shed new light on the artist’s interest in other artists’ works, reveal the significance of his youth and family life on his art, and explain the key concepts of his practice, such as his ideas on self-acceptance, ecstasy and sex. A book of historic importance, extensively and comprehensively illustrated throughout, it will become the reference point for all who want to understand Koons and creativity in the twenty-first century.