Editorial

From the Archives: Interview with Jeff Koons

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

A pink rectangle with an image of a blue heart hanging in a two-story room filled with windows. Blue text accompanies the image; it reads: I think banality is a fabulous tool.
Jeff Koons, Hanging Heart, 2006. Installation view, Jeff Koons, MCA Chicago, May 31–Sep 21, 2008. Photo © MCA Chicago
Installation view, Jeff Koons: Works 1979–1988, 1988 Photo © MCA Chicago

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). 20 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.

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