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I’m thinking in particular of the series Luxury and Degradation, which features exact reproductions, in oil on canvas, of liquor advertisements that were contemporary when Koons made them, in 1986. The paintings pair well-known slogans—“I could go for something Gordon’s” and “I assume you drink Mar…

[...] I have to say that Las Vegas has not been a disappointment: it is all just as you have read about so many times, with wedding chapels in the middle of the gambling-dens and the farce theatres with their advertisements for the quickest marriages (this is even more brazen than I had imagined: t…

At some point in the night, sleepless, as I stood by a window overlooking a blue swimming pool, I remembered walking once past the Waldorf and St. Bartholomew’s and the Seagram Building and then looking across the street to see a lovely girl in light green standing by the Mercedes-Benz showroom on …

“What is the role of commercial television in the twentieth century and beyond?”

“In my blackest moods I feel it spells chaos for all of us.”

“How do you get over these moods?” I said.

“I take a mild and gentle Palmolive bath, brush my teeth with Crest, swallow two Sominex tablets, and try…

“And I have the questions,” I said. “We begin, simply enough, with a man watching television. Quite possibly he is being driven mad, slowly, in stages, program by program, interruption by interruption. Still, he watches. What is there in that box? Why is he watching?”

“The TV set is a package an…