Jeff Koons: A Retrospective
June 27–Oct 19, 2014
Easyfun
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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.
Loopy, 1999
Jeff Koons, Loopy, 1999. Oil on canvas; 108 × 79 1⁄4 in. (274.3 × 200.7 cm). Bill Bell Collection. © Jeff Koons
Inspired in part by Pablo Picasso’s remark, “When I was a child I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to draw like a child,” Loopy and other paintings from the Easyfun series aim to recapture the innocent spirit of childhood. The smiling cartoon rabbit at the top of the canvas is the familiar mascot of Trix cereal. Its red nose is echoed in the cherry crowning a dollop of whipped cream, while its smile is doubled in the crescent of cereal pieces curving across the bottom of the picture. Winding through this imagery are tracks made for Hot Wheels toy cars and white polka dots that Koons has linked to the work of John Baldessari. Koons has commented that he hopes his paintings capture our attention the same way that a simple cereal box can grip a child’s imagination each day at breakfast.