Jeff, Embrace Your Past

In 1992, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened the first major museum retrospective of the work of Jeff Koons, who, at a boyish 37, was already an art-world sensation. His series 'Made in Heaven,' a set of photo-realist paintings depicting himself and his wife Ilona Staller-also known as La Cicciolina, a famous porn star-in various acrobatic coital poses, had premiered the past year to enormous controversy, and his collected body of work, with its heavy use of readymades and its assembly-line style production methods, was already inspiring a question that continues to stoke debate: is Koons a canny media critic, or a cynical market-reader trading in re-purposed junk, or something ineffable? Roger Teich and Henry S. Rosenthal's compelling, keen-eyed time-capsule work, filmed on 16mm at and around the opening of the exhibit, gives unprecedented access to Koons, features the last on-camera interviews with Jeff's father, Henry Koons and exhibition curator John Caldwell, and leaves that question tantalizingly open. The result is a multi-sided portrait of a man whose work continues to raise difficult, probing questions about the role of the artist in society.