Imagine ....

Jeff Koons - Diary Of A Seducer, BBC One, 10.35pm

As well as being one of the wealthiest living artists in the world - his Balloon Dog (Orange) sold at auction for $58 million in 2013 - 60-year-old New York-based Jeff Koons is also one of the most controversial.

His work ranges from sexually-explicit studies of himself and his former wife Ilona Staller, an Italian porn star-turned-MP, to glossy re-appropriations of Disney imagery which bring "Is it really art?" responses from the public as well as allegations of cynicism and superficiality from sniffy critics. But that same public flocks to his gallery shows regardless, drawn by a combination of his stellar name and his lozenge-bright art works.

In this programme, Alan Yentob travels to New York to try to find out what really makes Koons tick and to interview him ahead of an exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum. It's the first time that august institution has given over all its space to a single artist, testament to Koons's standing in the art world.

"I really believe in art," Koons tells a packed press conference at the opening of the exhibition. "It has taught me how to become a better human being". Given that, it's no surprise he's sometimes referred to as the art world's Billy Graham, a charismatic evangelist selling himself as much as anything else.

Over the course of the programme, Yentob tackles all these contradictions with his customary vigour. We hear from Koons himself, of course, who talks about his childhood, his early artistic influences and how his interior decorator father taught him about aesthetics. We see inside his vast Chelsea studio, where over 100 people work under his close instruction. And we hear from critics, gallerists and curators, as well as from people like neuroscientist Eric Kandel. He talks about Koons's skill at incorporating the beholder into the work of art. An example he gives is one of Koons's most recent series of works, coloured glass "gazing balls" resting on facsimiles of classical Greek statues.

It can get a little chewy at points, but it's testimony like Kandel's which puts meat on the theory that as well as being the world's wealthiest living artist, Jeff Koons is the most important.