Jeff Koons opens his London show

What is fast becoming 'Koons Week' in London continued last night with a private opening of the Serpentine Gallery show which opens to the public today, attended by Jeff Koons, his wife Justine and even his mother, as well as a roll-call from the London art and fashion world.

Among those enjoying the party on the lawn outside the Hyde Park gallery, and who joined the queue of celebs for the show itself, were designer Stella McCartney and boyfriend Alasdhair Willis, filmmaker Mike Figgis and his wife Rosie Chan and artist Tracey Emin accompanied by her photographer boyfriend Scott Douglas.

Emin had also been at a dinner given the previous night for Koons at the Paramount Club, attended by the Russian model-turned-gallerist Dasha Zhukova, Tate boss Sir Nicholas Serota, and the New York 'uber dealer' Larry Gagosian.

The Serpentine show, curated by the gallery's director Julia Peyton-Jones, is the first ever major show of Koons's work in a public gallery in England. The paintings and sculptures are from his Popeye Series, begun in 2002. The works incorporate all the Koons signature devices and motifs - inflatable children's toys, cartoon imagery and other items of consumer culture.

A former commodities trader, Koons has become the world's most successful living artist. While he still has many detractors who say he's a fake and a poseur, and write him off as the king of kitsch, it seems a long time since the Australian art critic Robert Hughes, in his 1997 book American Visions, damned him "a starry-eyed opportunist" and "the last art star to be cranked out by the Manhattan mechanism".

Now just as many call him a brave and original artist - especially if they get invited to his openings. ·