Jeff Koons: A Retrospective

Koons created Easyfun in 1999, during one of the most difficult periods of his artistic and personal life. His marriage to Ilona Staller ended acrimoniously, and she abducted their young son to Italy. Meanwhile, Koons embarked on Celebration, a series of large paintings and sculptures that were extremely difficult to execute for technical and financial reasons. With Easyfun, he attempted to free himself from these difficulties and to work in a faster and more direct manner. The colorful mirrors suggest a joyous menagerie of cartoon animal silhouettes, yet their blank faces and exaggerated scale also evoke a darker sense of foreboding. These works shift attention from their maker to their viewers, whom they reflect and distort. Easyfun also comprises Koons’s sculpture Split-Rocker and his first handmade oil painting, Loopy.