"They're archetypes. And archetypes are bigger than any one individual." Jeff Koons on his sculpture series Celebration

Jeff Koons is one of the most successful artists of the present day. Fundamental to his art is his presentation of himself in the image and through images. Koons works with the garish, loud, and colorful, as well as with the playful and kitschy. At the same time, he clearly positions himself within art historical traditions: For instance, he refers to two of the most famous Modernists ever—Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol—as well as to the formal vocabulary and visual theories of the Baroque and the Rococo.

This monograph, with its large color plates, documents Koons’s upcoming spectacular installation in the Upper Hall at Berlin’s New National Gallery. Koons will present the highly polished, large sculptures of his famous Celebration series, which he has been working on since the nineteen-nineties.

Exhibition: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Neue Nationalgalerie, October 31, 2008–February 8, 2009

Edited by Anette Hüsch,

texts by Anette Hüsch,

poem by Rainald Goetz, Peter-Klaus Schuster