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Jeff Koons' newest paintings combine high pixelation of sexual imagery with gestural paint splashes, in an erotic rampage that bursts off the canvas, energized by a friction between photography, painting and digital media. In part an homage to Courbet's "Origin of theWorld," these works argue for the flourishing of libido and aim to make a direct hit upon their viewer: "My work will use everything that it can to communicate. It will use any trick, I'll do anything- absolutely anything-to communicate and to win the viewer over," says the artist. Offsetting this quasi-religious solicitousness is Koons' usual great degree of care in the layering of images, and the pixelated imagery that compels the viewer to stand back some way to process it. (For Koons, pixelation too is a sign of authenticity.) This beautifully produced edition presents five of these new paintings printed on tipped-in color plates. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Not good
The book lacks content and only half of it is in English.
Not what I expected...

beautifully illustratedcoffee table book!
This is a wonderful book for anyone who appreciates pop art, Jeff Koons' talent and beautiful illustrations.This makes a wonderful coffee-table book to flip through.The original book was lost in transit and Amazon was incredibly helpful in reshipping the book with next day delivery.I would definitely purchase through them again.

Comprehensive and definitive
Jeff Koons is a controversial figure - of that much we can be sure. How he is remembered in the history books is still uncertain, but there will be no middle ground. Surveying the review shows that one seems to either love Koons or hate him with nothing in between. For myself, I'm deeply ambivalent; at times I'm fascinated by his ideas, while at other times, I find him exceedingly banal. I decided to investigate further. Knowing Taschen's reputation for excellence, I decided to start my deeper exploration of Koons with their massive retrospective on his life and work.

Most are probably already aware, but this book is a scaled-down version of one of Taschen's ultra-deluxe limited editions. I believe it's the exact same content, but in a smaller size. It can't be that much smaller though, because it's still a huge, heavy book - almost 600 pages, 2 inches thick, 9.4 pounds. It's truly an exhaustive source and I have yet to reach the halfway point. The reason I'm writing the review already is because it's just that good. Excellent, insightful commentary helps place Koons in his proper context and provides cogent and thought-provoking interpretations of his work all the way through his career.

Even if you're not as interested in the historical and analytical information, the book is amazing for just browsing. It's a comprehensive document of all his work, all rendered in high quality reproductions. I'm sure the limited edition is even better, but for a poor graduate student, this is still pretty nice!

If you're at all interested in Jeff Koons, this is the place to go. You will not find a more comprehensive document. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys late 20th century art.

Over The Top!
This book is massive and filled with Koons and more Koons. It's all in color and covers every aspect of his art so this is really the only book you need and it's also easily the best. A bargain at the published price so if you like Koons you can't go wrong.

overrated and not at all worth the price
Taschen books - especially limited books - are usually worth every penny. But Koons is different. Made for speculation reasons only, this book is not bought for the content. Because there is nothing new about Koons in this book, that we don't know already. It would have been good enough to create a XL-book like Michelangelo, Leonardo or Rivera for round about 120 dollars. I was simply bored by this book and sold it very quickly - for twice the price that I paid for it. At least therefore it was a good deal. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Impressive Exhibition Catalog
I've always been a fan of Jeff Koons.I love his wit, his irony, and his ability to push boundaries.

Not only is this book/catalog a great survey of his work, but an incredibly thorough documentation of the artist's oeuvre and exhibition at the MCA Chicago.(Besides, the price here is fantastic - I bought this at the exhibition last summer and it is still worth every penny.)

This is a must for artists, fans, educators, pop culture enthusiasts, and anyone interested in contemporary art. ... Read more

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This volume presents a marriage made in camp heaven--the splendid extravagance of the palace of Versailles as a backdrop for the gregarious, loud and equally extravagant sculptures of contemporary American Pop artist Jeff Koons, who mounted the first contemporary art exhibition ever in the apartments of the king in September 2008. What other artist could match Louis XIV's love of the saccharine gesture? Sugared up to the max, Koons here counterposes Versailles' rich detail with his more simplified forms, including a monumental red chocolate-box-style heart, balloon dog and suspended red aluminum lobster. Other works outdo Versailles for kitsch, such as Koons' marble self-portrait, playfully sited amid busts of Louis XIV, his infamous "Michael Jackson and Bubbles" sculpture and his ever-cryptic bare-breasted blonde clutching the Pink Panther. Yet others, such as the large vase of flowers, blend seamlessly with the decor. Needless to say, accusations of irreverence have abounded, but Koons avows only respect for the venue and has testified that he has drawn inspiration for his floral sculptures from the "fantasy and control" shown by Louis XIV himself. The degree of sympathy is as hard to contest as the edge of parody: Asked why he installed his vitrine of vacuum cleaners among the portraits of royalty in the Queen's antechamber, Koons replied that, among other things, vacuum cleaners are "very womblike." This monograph records each of the 17 works as exhibited and is supplemented with texts by Jean-Jacques Aillagon, chairman of Versailles and a former French culture minister, and controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq, among others. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Versailles a stage of the past, and for the present and the future.
This is a fantastic book. Might I say first that I was impartial to the art of Jeff Koons...until now. I went to the book store to look at this book for a uni assessment.I have to say I wasn't at all amused at the thought of spending $90 on a contemporary art book. This definitely changed as I rapidly turned the pages. I have studied Versailles and the art of this period and in hindsight I would say that I was a naive traditionalist art history student. I have only read the foreword (I am 498words into my assessment...I just had to share this) and I feel as though the contemporary art world has opened it's doors to me! Freaking awesome is the only way to put it. I already have so much to write. I never would have envisaged Versailles as a stage for contemporary art, now I only pray that I can get hold of the next installment- Murakami super-flat artist in Versailles 2010 (this artist I do know well!).

This book=
About 15% words and 85% super HD massive photographs of Jeff Koons art in Versailles. The reading is accessible (I know nothing little about contemporary art) and very informative for a range of readers. The rationale of the exhibition is clear. The photographs are exceptional. Research and coffee table book in one.

Conclusion: I feel inspired to read more about contemporary art- and definitely see more of it!

This is not a good book -
This is a fantastic book. IT IS FANTASTIC.

I have just received the book today, and it became one of my most precious and prized possessions right away . Plus, what a great price! Don't miss this. Just don't. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Woman according to Roy
The catalogue for an exhibition held at the Gagosian gallery in NYC in 2008, this wonderful book focuses on a major 1962-1964 series by Roy Lichtenstein, in which he concentrated exclusively on the feminine face. The book starts with an interview by Jeff Koons of the artist's widow, Dorothy, who gives a fascinating account of Lichtenstein's working method and ideas and is complemented with an artist's book by Richard Prince who thereby delivers his own reinterpretation of the Girls series.The illustrations are first-rate, often with magnified details, and the exhibition not only covers the paintings, but also the rarely-seen preparatory drawings and source materials, all of which are illustrated in the book. A must-have for any Lichtenstein fan. ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Hulk Elvis - Jeff Koons (Rizzoil)
There is perhaps no other artist that engenders such diametrically opposed reactions in the art world as Jeff Koons. It's no secret that his larger than life reproductions of everyday objects inspire some while often disturbing others. Koons' flair for serious kitsch combined with what some regard as a self-aggrandising attitude have put him at the center of controversy in the art world for the last two decades.

His latest work, `Hulk Elvis,' scales back the ambition slightly (no 45 foot topiary sculptures in this volume) to showcase an exhibit from his show of the same name at London's Gagosian Gallery in 2007. The large format, 140 page book features images of the Incredible Hulk, the Liberty Bell, an inflatable monkey and even a distortion of Led Zeppelin photograph.

Koons' eye-popping images are a layered combination of photo montages, photoshop color halftone backgrounds and metallic silver paints (properly reproduced here with a fifth-color layer of metallic ink) to create images that jump off the page with animated energy. Commentary on Koons work is provided by Artforum's Scott Rothkopf (much of which oddly centers around Jeff Koons' October 2008 exhibition at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, Celebration.) The book also features an interview with Koons by longtime curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

There is also a collectable, autographed, first-edition that sells for about $500 when you can find it online. ... Read more

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Jeff Koons' Popeye series, begun in 2002, incorporates some of the artist's signature themes and motifs: the surrealistic combination of everyday objects, cartoon imagery, outsized scale, art-historical references and children's toys. The sculptures reproduced here continue Koons' fondness for casting inflatable toys in aluminum-carefully painted to resemble supple plastic-which he juxtaposes here with unaltered everyday objects, such as chairs or garbage cans. The Popeye paintings are complex and layered compositions that combine disparate images both found and created by Koons (including images of the sculptures in the series). The instantly recognizable figures of Popeye and Olive Oyl are central, and recur across several key works within the book. Frederic Tuten, Arthur C. Danto and Dorothea von Hantelmann provide commentary on this fun body of work, which Koons discusses in a conversation with Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fun Book For The Koons Collector
If you're a Koons fan then this is a must-have. It covers the complete Popeye series in-depth and in full color. If you're looking for a "best of" or greatest hits collection of Koons then this is not the book for you. This is more for the Koons fans who want to look at the Popeye series in its entirety. The quality of the paper and reproductions is good my only complaint is that I would have liked to have had a hardcover option. ... Read more

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For his recent series of work entitled Easy Fun-Ethereal, Jeff Koons employs new computer technology to merge populist icons into desktop collages, which he then transforms into traditional oil paintings rendered with photorealist precision. Drawn from glossy magazines and advertisements, the imagery includes smiley-faced sandwiches, spiraling roller coasters, succulent lips and abstract juice splashes. These hybrids of fun and fantasy simultaneously celebrate childhood pleasures and adult sexual desire: in keeping with Koons's stated intention to "communicate with the masses," the cheerful works are accessible to all. Accompanying an exhibition of seven large-scale paintings commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, this lively volume features 40 full-color reproductions. Art historian David Sylvester's interview with Koons puts forth the artist's perspective on his career to date, while Robert Rosenblum's essay provides an in-depth analysis of the technique and imagery employed in EasyFun-Ethereal.Essay by Robert Rosenblum.~Interview by David Sylvester.Hardcover, 11 x 8.25 in./80 pgs / 40 color 0 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20385Amazon.com Review
Pop master Jeff Koons offers up a glittery vision of a world distilled from media images and exploded onto canvas. The collage-like paintings in Koons's Easyfun-Ethereal series combine such bizarrely varied items as cold-cut sandwiches with smiley faces, women's manicured feet in fancy shoes, gooey pastries, and landscaped backdrops. Food and female sexual symbols figure prominently in this series of paintings, flying pieces of canned corn layered with floating red mouths and shiny eyelids. And while the erotic nature of food has a long history, e.g. tales of aphrodisiacs like oysters, there is something unnerving about the sexualization of Cheerios and melted American cheese. The book includes an essay by art critic Robert Rosenblum expounding on the references embedded in Koons's work. Rosenblum discusses pop imagery taken from childhood objects and art historical influences ranging from baroque and rococo to pop, abstract expressionism, and surrealism. An interview with Koons himself reveals some of his more personal relationships with his process and work. For Jeff Koons fans this is a must-have. --J.P. Cohen ... Read more

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Published to accompany an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jasper Johns to Jeff Koons presents contemporary art from the private collections of Eli and Edythe Broad, which are among the most important in the world. Featuring works by 22 significant artists, including Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Cindy Sherman, this handsome volume addresses major movements such as American Neo-Dada and Pop, and German Neo-Expressionism, as well as art of the 1980s and current works from California.

An interview with the Broads and scholarly texts addressing important aspects of the collections situate the 160 full-color plates in art-historical context. ... Read more

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What a lush garden! Imagine the berserk beds that could sprout Koons' polychromed wood begonias next to Warhol's Matisse-adrift-on-Monet silkscreened petunias. This smart volume plants Koons' mostly sculptural exploration of the flower motif alongside a history of Warhol's serialized prints and drawings of the same from the 50s, 60s and 70s.Essay by Daniel Pinchbeck.Hardcover, 10.25 x 10.25 in./111 pgs / 62 color 0 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20137 ... Read more

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an in-depth study of koons's entire oeuvre to date. limited to 1 500 numbered copies each signed by jeff koons. from kinky to kitsch to conceptual jeff koons's art is anything but conformist. since he stirred up the art world establishment in the 1980s with his unapologetic basketball sculptures and stainless steel toy blow-ups koons has been known as somewhat of a bad boy. his gargantuan puppy a 43-foot tall floral terrier now resides at the guggenheim museum in bilbao spain. koons's exploitation of the banal in the aggrandizement and/or embodiment of kitsch and pop imagery has become his trademark; detractors may delight in their naysaying but koons's work commands millions at auction and his position at the forefront of contemporary art is indisputable. released in april 2008 and already sold out this one copy is the only copy we will likely ever have. hardcover + Box 13 x 17.3 in. 606 pages ... Read more

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"Hypermental" tracks, with unprecedented insight, the unfinished project of surrealism, exploring the visual art of the modern era not in terms of genres, schools, or media, but through the lens of subjectivity.This new catalogue explores how the modernist critique of the subject--exemplified by the art and philosophy of the Surrealists--has continued on through the postwar period and through to the present day. From Merit Oppenheim and Yayoi Kusama in the 1950s and 60s to Cindy Sherman and Matthew Barney in the 90s, we find works that interrogate the construction of the subject, and the body, through sexual difference. From the Pop-era pieces of Richard Hamilton and James Rosenquist to the more recent work of Richard Prince and Barbara Kruger, we find a narrative of the production of desire, one that refers explicitly to the elevated status of the commodity. "Hypermental" presents work by these artists and many more, juxtaposing their work with that of the original surrealists, and the resulting book is an exceptionally unique history of the most radical trends in the history of 20th century art. ... Read more

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Jeff Koons' spectacular October 2008 exhibition at Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie presented the infamous series of sculptures and paintings known collectively as Celebration, a project whose fabrication has involved so much labor (both manual and computer-aided) that Koons seemed to almost vanish from the art world radar in the 1990s, when he first undertook the series. At present, Celebration's best-known work may be the 10-foot-tall, stainless-steel "Balloon Dog," typical of the outsize scale and remarkably clean sheen of Koons' sculptures, in which the sensory joys of childhood object relations are revisited and espoused. Such works wear their playroom origins on their sleeves, but their gargantuan proportions, with their attendant sense of menace, establish them firmly in the adult world as infant objects retrieved and rebuilt with adult strength. "The work tries to gain support from the confidence of the gesture," Koons says, "to be kind of in the moment, and to have confidence within the self." Inasmuch as such observations could be true of much art, Koons is unusually open about what drives his work, all the while preserving its self-sufficiency as art. This monograph documents these mammoth installations in the Neue Nationalgalerie's Upper Hall, an exhibition that without doubt constitutes a milestone in the artist's career. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Surprised and Disappointed!
I was surprised to see that much of the text in this book is not in English.The photographs do not represent the entire Celebration series, which was disappointing. ... Read more