Here is what happens when Jeff Koons, one of the most important and controversial artists of the twenty-first century, sits down with distinguished art curator Sir Norman Rosenthal. Published to coincide with his 2014 2015 retrospective, this new book provides the most revealing portrait that exists of Jeff Koons singular personality and artistic vision as he discusses works across his thirty-five -year career with his long-time friend and collaborator Rosenthal. Rosenthal s masterful interviews, conducted over three years, give unparalleled access to the thoughts of one of the most influential minds in contemporary culture, disclosing the artist undistorted and in his own words. As well as examining all his major series in depth, from his first inflatables to his latest series on antiquities, the interviews shed new light on the artist s interest in other artists works, reveal the significance of his youth and family life on his art, and explain the key concepts of his practice, such as his ideas on self-acceptance, ecstasy and sex. A book of historic importance, extensively and comprehensively illustrated throughout, it will become the reference point for all who want to understand Koons and creativity in the twenty-first century."

"I couldn't think of a better place to have a dialogue about art today and what it can be" - Jeff Koons Curated by Koons himself, together with guest curator Norman Rosenthal, this show features seventeen important works, fourteen of which have never been exhibited in the UK before. They span the artist's entire career and his most well-known series, including Equilibrium, Statuary, Banality, Antiquity and his recent Gazing Ball sculptures and paintings. This exhibition will provoke a conversation between his creations and the history of art and ideas with which his work engages. Jeff Koons burst onto the contemporary art scene in the 1980s. He has been described as the most famous, important, subversive, controversial and expensive artist in the world. From his earliest works Koons has explored the 'ready-made' and 'appropriated image', using unadulterated found objects and creating painstaking replicas of ancient sculptures and Old Master paintings which almost defy belief in their craftsmanship and precision. Throughout his career Koons has pushed at the boundaries of contemporary art practice, stretching the limits of what is possible. This publication accompanies an exhibiton, running from February to June, 2019 at the Ashmolean. Koons will be in conversation with Martin Kemp at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, in May 2019. Contents: Director's Foreword; interview with Jeff Koons (by Xa Sturgis); Jeff Koons and the Sheen and Shine of Time (Sir Norman Rosenthal); catalogue entries; Jeff Koon biography.

An ambitious intergenerational survey of twenty-five contemporary New York artists. Contemporary art, like the city of New York, has seen massive growth over the past five decades. The twenty-five artists profiled in Empire State, from Dan Graham and Jeff Koons to the net-based Tabor Robak, question existing conventions and explore the new possibilities manifested by their community's new, near-industrial scale. Empire State is an exhibition that asks how artists might reimagine urban life and how the city of New York might continue to be a site of contestation. Making new connections among the artists via commissioned pieces, the book includes essays by the show's curators, Alex Gartenfeld and Sir Norman Rosenthal, and by Tom McDonough, John Miller, Eileen Myles, and Matt Keegan. Each artist's work is paired with original texts by a host of leading critics and curators, such as Bruce Hainley, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Bonnie Clearwater, and Tina Kukielski.

Rainer Fetting achieved international recognition with the "New Wild Ones" in the early 1980s. With its elements of Expressionist painting, his art formed in opposition to the conventions of Abstract and Conceptual Art toward the end of the 1970s is highly topical again today. Fetting's painting is a significant precursor for the "queer" discourses on gender, identity, the individual, and power that not only shape the works of younger generations in our globalized art world but also current mainstream debates. His "expressive" portraits, cityscapes, and landscapes as well as the still lifes and flower paintings on which this publication focuses capture psychosocial energies that are evident in every painterly decision he makes. Works from four decades are presented here, some of them unpublished, early drawn studies and paintings from the time Fetting was commuting between New York and Berlin the 1980s and 1990s in addition to recent paintings, works on paper, and sculptures. The illustrated book is published in conjunction with the exhibition in the spaces of the Miettinen Collection in Berlin.