Pop Art

Anyone who likes modern art would know the name Jeff Koons. A new book just published in Spanish (also in English, Italian and Portuguese) about this artist's life and work, 591 pages priced at €49.99 that, at a quick mental calculation, is about $75.

Very few present day artists stir up as much controversy as Jeff Koons. For some he was the monster that had created the unstoppable art market sustained by millionaires without more knowledge of art than the quoted value of it in an auction; for others he was a genius of marketing, like Damien Hirst, or the Japanese Takashi Murakami, that instead of art, do merchandising, very expensive, but merchandising nevertheless. The fact that Koons or Hirst have been disputing in recent years the honoured title of who is the more expensive artists, live, no doubt has contributed to foster arguments of the critics.

There is yet another group that holds the belief that Koons has opened up new routes to the current wave of modern pop art (his is classified as pospop or neopop) and therefore deserve acknowledgement in the history of art.

His work is sometimes explicitly sexual - who doesn't remember the series of photographs openly pornographic, with his wife Llona Staller, better known as Cicciolina - and almost always irrelevant. But, as it usually occurs with controversial or problematic figures, to emit a well informed justification, it's advisable to dig deep into the subject first.

This monographic volume of the artist details meticulously his career, from his early fascination by Dali and Duchamp till the present, with his own declarations.

Sculpture by Koons, titled 'Pink Panther' (1988). Can't say I am too impressed.

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