From the Archives: Interview with Jeff Koons

Jul 29, 2014

on the video

In this excerpted interview on the occasion of his exhibition at the MCA, Jeff Koons: Works 1979–1988(Jul 1–Aug 28, 1988), Jeff Koons speaks about banality as a tool, consumerism, the cultural mainstream, and the influence of Duchamp.

Jeff Koons, Hanging Heart, 2006. Installation view, Jeff Koons, MCA Chicago, May 31–Sep 21, 2008
Photo © MCA Chicago

on the exhibition

This seminal 1988 exhibition was the first American survey of Koons's work, and a few of the artworks featured eventually found their way into the MCA Collection, including the ever-popular Rabbit(1986). Twenty years later the MCA revisited his work in the exhibitions Jeff Koons—conceived in close collaboration with the artist—and Everything’s Here: Jeff Koons and His Experience of Chicago, which reflected on Koons's year spent in Chicago as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and as an assistant to Ed Paschke.

If you find yourself in New York, check out his most recent retrospective, on view at the Whitney through October 19.