Easyfun-Ethereal

Amazon.com Review\nPop 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\nProduct description\nFor 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.\nFrom the Publisher\nExhibition Schedule: Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin: Oct. 27, 2000-Jan. 14, 2001; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao: Sept. 25, 2001-Jan. 20, 2002