Jeff Koons: Popeye Series
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Jeff Koons: Popeye Series Details
Jeff Koons' Popeye series, begun in 2002, incorporates some of the artist's signature themes and motifs: the surrealistic combination of everyday objects, cartoon imagery, outsized scale, art-historical references and children's toys. The sculptures reproduced here continue Koons' fondness for casting inflatable toys in aluminum―carefully painted to resemble supple plastic―which he juxtaposes here with unaltered everyday objects, such as chairs or garbage cans. The Popeye paintings are complex and layered compositions that combine disparate images both found and created by Koons (including images of the sculptures in the series). The instantly recognizable figures of Popeye and Olive Oyl are central, and recur across several key works within the book. Frederic Tuten, Arthur C. Danto and Dorothea von Hantelmann provide commentary on this fun body of work, which Koons discusses in a conversation with Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Reviews
If you're a Koons fan then this is a must-have. It covers the complete Popeye series in-depth and in full color. If you're looking for a "best of" or greatest hits collection of Koons then this is not the book for you. This is more for the Koons fans who want to look at the Popeye series in its entirety. The quality of the paper and reproductions is good my only complaint is that I would have liked to have had a hardcover option.