Thirty five years of inflatables, naked ladies, colored mirrors, basketballs, vacuum cleaners, and cartoon animals have gathered together for the first time. The menagerie of sculptures and paintings range from super-sized shiny to blandly ubiquitous, at times cerebral and at other times really in your face. He’s an extrovert who often makes somewhat uncomfortable comments about inflatable toys, like “The sexual power of the imagery was so intoxicating to me visually that I had to have a drink.” We are enchanted by his prolificness, his whimsy, and his celebrity. Collectors and speculators throw gobs of money at him for enormous metal Popeyes, lobsters, and balloon dogs. I’m talking, of course, about Jeff Koons whose first New York retrospective is currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Jeff Koons: A Retrospective is a celebration of an artist’s uncanny ability to make metal look plastic and Michael Jackson look white.
