Jeff Koons

The man who enshrined a Hoover, who suspended a basketball in a fish tank half filled with water, who created a life-size polychromed wooden replica of Michael Jackson and his pet chimp Bubbles, and who made a monumental topiary sculpture in the shape of a puppy, is here given a mini-retrospective in the form of a book. Jeff Koons: Pictures 1980-2002 focuses primarily on the formation and development of Koons's paintings, but given that the considers his early sculptures to be three-dimensional paintings, this limit need hardly be considered medium-restrictive. Thomas Kellein's extended interview provides a walloping good tale told by the artist himself. In it, Koons remembers his childhood drawing lessons, his first sale (his father had a decorating business and showroom where he would display and sell his 11-year-old son's art), his experiences at art school, his courtship with ex-wife, porn star Cicciolina (they fell in love after he hired her to make his Made in Heaven series), and how the birth of his son inspired his Celebration series, all the while sharing his philosophies on art. Organized chronologically and with an extended biography and bibliography, Pictures presents each of the main works from Koons's painting series from 1980 to the present.