Jeff Koons' "Waterfall Couple (Dots) Brown Swirl." Image via The Los Angeles Times.

Jeff Koons:  New Paintings at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills features ten oil on canvas paintings that breath new life into Koons’ tradition of questioning taste, banality, sexuality, and consumerism.  The multilayered paintings are either 9 x 12 feet or 9 x 7 feet and the dominant colors are graffiti tinged silver, verdant green, and fleshy almost scatological browns, reds, and beiges.  There are nods to Cy Twombly’s blobs of color, Roy Lichtenstein’s dots, and the porno themed backgrounds and depth of field suggest Gustave Courbet’s graphic L’Origine du Monde.  

Critic David Pagel compared Koons’ oeuvre to the work of Andy Warhol in The Los Angeles Times Culture Monster blog:

“If Warhol is the father of Pop Art, Koons is a chip off the old block, an unparalleled imitator whose imitations are so cockeyed and corny that they come off as originals, weird as that is… The crass aspirations of the nouveau riche are Koons’ great subject. His oeuvre is the visual equivalent of a 19th century novel of manners. If that’s boring, it’s exactly the type of boredom that fascinated Andy.”

But the paintings are supposed to be “boring” as an artistic device for social commentary, much the same way Andy Warhol exposed a different generation’s obsession with pop culture, Koons sometimes cheesy creations bring forth the shortcomings of our own superficial society.  The paintings are “boring” in a positive way and have an appealing intensity that vibrates from the walls as you study the many layers.  Jeff Koons:  New Paintings is an important show of Koons new paintings and shouldn’t be missed.

– Emily Waldorf