Jeff Koons
History
Jeffrey Lynn Koons is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania.
Thanks
After reuniting with Gwen Stacy, Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is catapulted across the Multiverse, where he encounters the Spider Society, a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the Multiverse’s very existence. But when the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must set out on his own to save those he loves most.
Self - Artist
A remarkable walk through the life and work of the French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), one of the most important creators of the 20th century, revolutionary of arts, aesthetics and pop culture.
Self
Spit Earth: Who Is Jordan Wolfson? is a feature documentary film about this controversial and divisive artist who in the ensuing five years has only solidified his stature with unnerving and provocative new works that elicit extreme reactions from both critical naysayers and vocal proponents alike. Wolfson is not content to play by the rules of a conservative self-policing art market that favors the status quo, instead preferring to make us squirm as he engages a host of lightning-rod issues facing our society today; homophobia, misogyny, racism, white nationalism, antisemitism and violence to name but a few. Wolfson is an art maker on the world stage whose immersive works take on today’s endemic virtue signaling and politically correct narratives, veritably throwing it all back into our faces.
Featuring collectors, dealers, auctioneers and a rich range of artists, including market darlings George Condo, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, this documentary examines the role of art and artistic passion in today’s money-driven, consumer-based society.
Self
Jeff Koons is a MOCA commissioned mini-documentary on the career of artist Jeff Koons, directed by Oscar Boyson.
Self - Ilona's Husband (archive footage)
The personal and professional story of Ilona Staller, known as Cicciolina, is probably unique: she left communist Hungary and moved to Italy, where she found a fertile environment for a life dedicated to scandal.
Self
A chronicle of the personal life and public career of the celebrated artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.
Self - Artist (archive footage)
As one art scene insider proclaims, the contemporary art world can be summed up as “rich people trying to prove how rich they are,” but is that all there is to this billion dollar industry? Well-researched and expertly constructed, Barry Avrich’s eye-opening documentary peels back the layers of the art world economy- from production to circulation, and delineates every integral player in the game of art-making, including curators, gallerists, collectors, donors, auction houses, and … artists. In the process, he unpacks the complex and surprising ecosystem that supports the art world superstars and million-dollar deals that make front-page news. Featuring extraordinary access to industry players and candid statements from prominent artists like Damien Hirst, Julian Schnabel, Taryn Simon, and Marina Abramovic, Blurred Lines collides the two narratives of the art world as both above and beholden to market forces.
Self
Director Francesco Carrozzini creates an intimate portrait of his mother, Franca Sozzani, the legendary editor-in-chief of Italian Vogue. From the ridiculous to the sublime, her astonishing but often controversial magazine covers have not only broken the rules but also set the high bar for fashion, art and commerce over the past 25 years. From the legendary “Black Issue" and the “Plastic Surgery issue" Sozzani remains deeply committed to exploring subject matter off limits to most in order to shake up the status quo and occasionally redefine the concept of beauty.
Self - Artist (archive footage)
Italy, 1970. An increasing legion of harmless warriors begins a peaceful struggle for sexual freedom through pornography, shaking and shocking religious authorities and conservative political institutions. They are ironic, happy, crazy. They are dreamers, defenders of definitive communion between body and soul. But they were censored and humiliated. They were mistreated and arrested for demanding loud a new cultural renaissance.
Himself
In Jeff Koons: Diary of a Seducer, imagine... enters the world of one of the most successful, controversial and downright odd artists of our time. His gigantic balloon dogs and even bigger flower puppies have become iconic. His rows of virgin vacuum cleaners are frozen in time. Michael Jackson sits with his pet chimp Bubbles. But the artist who celebrates the commonplace and has put sex and the banal on a pedestal has mined some dark territory. Is it playtime or parental guidance recommended? As Jeff Koons' first retrospective takes over the Whitney Museum in New York and the Pompidou in Paris, imagine... asks what lies beneath the shiny surfaces.
Himself
The Whitney Museum of American Art presented the landmark exhibition Jeff Koons: A Retrospective from June 27 to October 19, 2014. It was the largest, most comprehensive survey of Koons’s art ever assembled, spanning four decades of his career and displaying 145 works from every series, including 13 new pieces exhibited publicly for the first time. The film follows Koons and Whitney Chief Curator, Scott Rothkopf, who conceived and organized the show, through every gallery of the exhibition. In addition, insightful interviews with Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s Director, Robert Storr, Dean Emeritus of the Yale School of Art, and Michelle Kuo, Editor of Artforum, help to deepen the investigation into Koon’s art and process.
Self
Documentary in which art critic Waldemar Januszczak argues that beauty is still to be found in modern art, despite several recent books claiming the contrary.
Art Agnos
The true story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man ever elected to public office. In San Francisco in the late 1970s, Harvey Milk becomes an activist for gay rights and inspires others to join him in his fight for equal rights that should be available to all Americans.
Self - Artist
An account of the professional and personal life of renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz, from her early artistic endeavors to her international success as a photojournalist, war reporter, and pop culture chronicler.
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Ric Burns unearths rarely seen footage and offers keen observations on the life and artistic influence of Andy Warhol. [Made for and aired on PBS's American Masters series.]
Self
Twenty-five years ago the renowned art critic Robert Hughes made The Shock of the New, a landmark television series that examined the key cultural movement of the 20th Century. Now he's back to look at more recent work and to question whether modern art can still be shocking in its originality and understanding. In an age of media saturation it's perhaps even harder to tell what is good art and what is bad; but Hughes cuts through the marketing and the hype to reveal the art that is vital and will last; the art which defines the times in which we live. In a film which features interviews with David Hockney, Paula Rego, Jeff Koons and Sean Scully, Robert Hughes makes the case that painting, drawing, and the search for beauty matter more than ever before.
Jeff Koons is undoubtedly the most famously controversial artist today. Whereas American public institutions and art collectors have long ago established him as Warhol's successor, many Europeans still consider him only as an opportunist and an attention seeker. With his combination of the great entrepreneur's positive thinking, the freedom of Pop Art and perfectionism comparable to the masters of the past, Jeff Koons has undeniably succeeded in promoting the strategies of avant garde to the public. This film shows how he has reinvented his role as an artist into a media personality and the status his works enjoy with a number of collectors who have allowed him to fulfil his dreams. Through his art, his own words and those of friends, this world of seduction and reflection also reveals glimpses of a darker and a gloomier side.
Self
Art in an Age of Mass Culture pulls back the curtain and takes a look at the cultural climate surrounding MoMA's now famed exhibition, "High and Low: High Art and Popular Culture". Opening in the fall of 1990, the show placed a spotlight on the rapid merging of consumerism and the artistic avant-garde. Curated by Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik and featuring work from artists such as Jeff Koons and Roy Lichtenstein, "High and Low" ignites conversations of mass culture and our society's ever-changing relationship with the arts.