Jeff Koons

Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) 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. His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least two record auction prices for a work by a living artist: US$58.4 million for '' Balloon Dog (Orange)'' in 2013 and US$91.1 million for ''Rabbit'' in 2019.

Critics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch, crass, and based on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings and critiques in his works.

Early life

Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, to Henry and Gloria Koons. His fatherWood, Gaby (June 3, 2007)
"The wizard of odd"
''The Guardian''. was a furniture dealer and interior decorator. His mother was a seamstress. Schjeldahl, Peter
"Funhouse – A Jeff Koons retrospective"
''The New Yorker'', June 9, 2008. When he was nine years old, his father would place old master paintings that Koons copied and signed in the window of his shop in an attempt to attract visitors. As a child he went door-to-door after school selling gift-wrapping paper and candy to earn pocket money. As a teenager he revered Salvador Dalí so much that he visited him at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City.

Koons studied painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While a student at the Art Institute, Koons met the artist Ed Paschke, who became a major influence and for whom Koons worked as a studio assistant in the late 1970s. He lived in Lakeview, and then in the Pilsen neighborhood at Halsted Street and 19th Street.

After college, Koons moved to New York in 1977Ingrid Sischy (March 2001)
"Koons, High and Low"
''Vanity Fair''. and worked at the membership desk of the Museum of Modern Art while establishing himself as an artist. During this time, he dyed his hair red and often wore a pencil mustache, after Salvador Dalí. In 1980, he became licensed to sell mutual funds and stocks and began working as a Wall Street commodities broker at First Investors Corporation. After a summer with his parents in Sarasota, Florida, where he briefly worked as a political canvasser, Koons returned to New York and found a new career as a commodities broker, first at Clayton Brokerage Company and then at Smith Barney.

Work

Jeff Koons rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated era. He gained recognition in the 1980s and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a SoHo loft on the corner of Houston Street and Broadway in New York. It was staffed with over 30 assistants, each assigned to a different aspect of producing his work—in a similar mode as Andy Warhol's Factory. Koon's work is produced using a method known as art fabrication.Akbar, Arifa
"Koons Most Expensive Living Artist at Auction"
, ''The Independent'' (London), 7 November 2007. Until 2019, Koons had a studio factory near the old Hudson rail yardsLucy Davies (June 18, 2012)
Is Jeff Koons having a laugh?
''Daily Telegraph''. in Chelsea and employed upwards of 90 to 120 assistants to produce his work. More recently, Koons has downsized staffing and shifted to more automated forms of production and relocated to a much smaller studio space. Koons used a color-by-numbers system, so that each of his assistants could execute his canvases and sculptures as if they had been done "by a single hand".

''Early Works'' and ''Inflatables''

Between 1977 and 1979 Koons produced four separate artworks, which he later referred to as Early Works. Starting from 1978 he worked on his ''Inflatables'' series, consisting of inflatable flowers and a rabbit of various heights and colors, positioned along with mirrors.

''The Pre-New'', ''The New'', and ''Equilibrium'' series

Since 1979 Koons has produced work within series. His early work was in the form of conceptual sculpture, an example of which is ''The Pre-New'', a series of domestic objects attached to light fixtures, resulting in strange new configurations. Another example is ''The New'', a series of vacuum-cleaners, often selected for brand names that appealed to the artist like the iconic Hoover, which he had mounted in illuminated Perspex boxes. Koons first exhibited these pieces in the window of the New Museum in New York in 1980. He chose a limited combination of vacuum cleaners and arranged them in cabinets accordingly, juxtaposing the verticality of the upright cleaners with the squat cylinders of the "Shelton Wet/Dry drum" cleaners. At the museum, the machines were displayed as if in a showroom, and oriented around a central red fluorescent lightbox with just the words "The New" written on it as if it were announcing some new concept or marketing brand.

Another example for Koons' early work is ''The Equilibrium Series'' (1983), consisting of one to three basketballs floating in distilled water, a project the artist had researched with the help of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. The ''Total Equilibrium Tanks'' are completely filled with distilled water and a small amount of ordinary salt, to assist the hollow balls in remaining suspended in the centre of the liquid. In a second version, the ''50/50 Tanks'', only half the tank is filled with distilled water, with the result that the balls float half in and half out of the water. In addition, Koons conceived and fabricated five unique works for the ''Encased'' series (1983–1993/98), sculptures consisting of stacked sporting balls (four rows of six basketballs each, and one row of six soccer balls) with their original cardboard packaging in glass display case. Also part of the ''Equilibrium'' series are posters featuring basketball stars in Nike advertisements and 10 bronze objects, representing lifesaving gear.

''Statuary'' series

Koons started creating sculptures using inflatable toys in the 1970s. Taking a readymade inflatable rabbit, Koons cast the object in highly polished stainless steel, resulting in ''Rabbit'' (1986), one of his most famous artworks. Originally part of the private collection of Ileana Sonnabend, ''Rabbit'' is today owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. A proof of the sculpture is owned by Eli Broad.

The ''Rabbit'' has since returned to its original soft form, and many times larger at more than 50 feet high, taken to the air. On October 15, 2009, the giant metallic monochrome color rabbit used during the 2007 Macy's Thanksgiving day parade was put on display for Nuit Blanche in the Eaton Centre in Toronto. The other objects of the series combine objects Koons found in souvenir shops and baroque imagery, thereby playing with the distinction between low art and high art.

On May 15, 2019, Koons set the record for most expensive piece sold by a living artist for the sale of "Rabbit". "Rabbit" was sold at Christie's Auction House for US$80 million which—including auctioneer's fees—resulted in a final sale price of US$91,075,000.

''Luxury and Degradation'' series and ''Kiepenkerl''

First shown in Koons' eponymous exhibitions at the short-lived International With Monument Gallery, New York, and at Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1986, the ''Luxury and Degradation'' series is a group of works thematically centered on alcohol. This group included a stainless steel travel cocktail cabinet, a Baccarat crystal decanter and other hand-made renderings of alcohol-related paraphernalia, as well as reprinted and framed ads for drinks such as Gordon's Gin ("I Could Go for Something Gordon's"), Hennessy ("Hennessy, The Civilized Way to Lay Down the Law"), Bacardi ("Aquí... el gran sabor del ron Bacardi"), Dewars ("The Empire State of Scotch"), Martell ("I Assume You Drink Martell") and Frangelico ("Stay in Tonight" and "Find a Quiet Table") in seductively intensified colors on canvas Koons appropriated these advertisements and revalued them by recontextualizing them into artworks. They "deliver a critique of traditional advertising that supports Baudrillard's censorious view of the obscene promiscuity of consumer signs". Another work, ''Jim Beam – J.B. Turner Engine'' (1986), is based on a commemorative, collectible in bottle in the form of a locomotive that was created by Jim Beam; however, Koons appropriated this model and had it cast in gleaming stainless-steel. The train model cast in steel titled ''Jim Beam – Baggage Car'' (1986) even contains Jim Beam bourbon. With the ''Luxury and Degradation'' series Koons interfered into the realms of the social. He created an artificial and gleaming surface which represented a proletarian luxury. It was interpreted as seduction by simulation because it was fake luxury. Being the producer of this deception brought him to a kind of leadership, as he commented himself.

The same material of stainless steel was used for the statue of ''Kiepenkerl''. After being rebuilt in the 1950s, the figure of the itinerant trader was replaced by Jeff Koons in 1987 for the decennial ''Skulptur Projekte'' exhibition. Standing on a central square in Münster, the statue retained a certain cultural power as a nostalgic symbol of the past. During the production process, the foundry where the piece was being made wanted to knock the ceramic shell off too soon, which resulted in the piece being bent and deformed. Koons decided to bring in a specialist and give the piece "radical plastic surgery." After this experience he felt liberated: "I was now free to work with objects that did not necessarily pre-exist. I could create models."

''Banality'' series

Koons then moved on to the '' Banality'' series. For this project he engaged workshops in Germany and Italy that had a long tradition of working in ceramic, porcelain, and wood. The series culminated in 1988 with ''Michael Jackson and Bubbles,'' a series of three life-size gold-leaf plated porcelain statues of the sitting singer cuddling Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee. Three years later, one of these sold at Sotheby's New York for US$5.6 million. Two of these sculptures are now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) in downtown Los Angeles. The statue was included in a 2004 retrospective at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo which traveled a year later to the Helsinki City Art Museum. It also featured in his second retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in 2008. The statue is currently back at the newly opened Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art at Tjuvholmen in Oslo. Recently, his work ''Christ and the Lamb'' (1988) has been analyzed as an acknowledgment and critique of the spiritual and meditative power of the Rococo.

Anticipating a less than generous critical response to his 1988 ''Banality'' series exhibition, with all of his new objects made in an edition of three, allowing for simultaneous, identical shows at galleries in New York, Cologne, and Chicago, Koons devised the ''Art Magazine Ads'' series (1988–1989). Placed in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, and Art News, the ads were designed as promotions for his own gallery exhibitions. Koons also issued ''Signature Plate'', an edition for Parkett magazine, with a photographic decal in colors on a porcelain plate with gold-plated rim. Arts journalist Arifa Akbar reported for ''The Independent'' that in "an era when artists were not regarded as 'stars', Koons went to great lengths to cultivate his public persona by employing an image consultant". Featuring photographs by Matt Chedgey, Koons placed "advertisements in international art magazines of himself surrounded by the trappings of success" and gave interviews "referring to himself in the third person".

''Made in Heaven'' series

In 1989 the Whitney Museum and its guest curator Marvin Heiferman asked Koons to make an artwork about the media on a billboard for the show "Image World: Art and Media Culture". The billboard was meant as an advertisement for an unmade movie, entitled ''Made in Heaven.'' Koons employed his then-wife Ilona Staller ("Cicciolina") as a model in the shoot that formed the basis of the resulting work for the Whitney, ''Made in Heaven'' (1990–1991). Including works with such titles as ''Dirty Ejaculation'' and ''Ilonaʼs Asshole'', the series of enormous grainy photographs printed on canvas, glassworks, and sculptures portrayed Koons and Staller in highly explicit sexual positions and created considerable controversy. The paintings of the series reference art from the Baroque and Rococo periods—among others, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher—and also draw upon the breakthroughs of early modern painters as Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet.Jeff Koons: Made in Heaven, Paintings, October 6, 2010 – January 6, 2011
Luxembourg & Dayan, New York.

The series was first shown at the 1990 Venice Biennale.Jeff Koons
Guggenheim Collection. Koons reportedly destroyed much of the work when Staller took their son Ludwig with her to Italy. In celebration of ''Made in Heavens 20th anniversary, Luxembourg & Dayan chose to present a redux edition of the series. The Whitney Museum also exhibited several of the photographs on canvas in their 2014 retrospective.

''Puppy''

Koons was not among the 44 American artists selected to exhibit their work in Documenta 9 in 1992, but was commissioned by three art dealers to create a piece for nearby Arolsen Castle in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The result was ''Puppy'', a tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy, executed in a variety of flowers (including Marigolds, Begonias, Impatiens, Petunias, and Lobelias)Jeff Koons: Puppy, June 6 – September 5, 2000
Public Art Fund. on a transparent color-coated chrome stainless steel substructure. The self-cleaning flowers would grow for the specific length of time that the piece was exhibited. The size and location of ''Puppy'' -the courtyard of a baroque palace- acknowledged the mass audience. After the outbreak that followed his ''Made in Heaven'' series, Koons decided to make "an image that communicated warmth and love to people."
In 1995, in a co-venture between Museum of Contemporary Art, Kaldor Public Art Projects and Sydney Festival, the sculpture was dismantled and re-erected at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Sydney Harbour on a new, more permanent, stainless steel armature with an internal irrigation system. While the Arolsen ''Puppy'' had 20,000 plants, the Sydney version held around 60,000.

The piece was purchased in 1997 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed on the terrace outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Before the dedication at the museum, an Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) trio disguised as gardeners attempted to plant explosive-filled flowerpots near the sculpture, but was foiled by Basque police officer Jose María Aguirre, who then was shot dead by ETA members. Currently the square in which the statue is placed bears the name of Aguirre. In the summer of 2000, the statue traveled to New York City for a temporary exhibition at Rockefeller Center.

Media mogul Peter Brant and his wife, model Stephanie Seymour, commissioned Koons to create a duplicate of the Bilbao statue ''Puppy'' (1993) for their Connecticut estate, the Brant Foundation Art Study Center. In 1998, a miniature version of ''Puppy'' was released as a white glazed porcelain vase, in an edition of 3000.

''Celebration'' series

Koons' ''Celebration'' was to honor the ardently hoped-for return of Ludwig from Rome. Consisting of a series of large-scale sculptures and paintings of balloon dogs, Valentine hearts, diamonds, and Easter eggs, was conceived in 1994. Some of the pieces are still being fabricated. Each of the 20 different sculptures in the series comes in five differently colored "unique versions", including the artist's cracked ''Egg (Blue)'' won the 2008 Charles Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work in the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. The ''Diamond'' pieces were created between 1994 and 2005, made of shiny stainless steel seven-feet wide. Created in an edition of five versions, his later work ''Tulips'' (1995–2004) consists of a bouquet of multicolor balloon flowers blown up to gargantuan proportions (more than tall and across). Koons finally started to work on ''Balloon Flower'' in 1995.

Koons was pushing to finish the series in time for a 1996 exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, but the show was ultimately canceled because of production delays and cost overruns. When "Celebration" funding ran out, the staff was laid off, leaving a skeleton crew of two: Gary McCraw, Koons' studio manager, who had been with him since 1990, and Justine Wheeler, an artist from South Africa, who had arrived in 1995 and eventually took charge of the sculpture operation. The artist convinced his primary collectors Dakis Joannou, Peter Brant, and Eli Broad, along with dealers Jeffrey Deitch, Anthony d'Offay, and Max Hetzler, to invest heavily in the costly fabrication of the ''Celebration'' series at Southern California-based Carlson & Company (including his '' Balloon Dog'' and ''Moon'' series),Jori Finkel
"At the Ready When Artists Think Big,"
''The New York Times'', April 27, 2008. Accessed April 15, 2019.Paul Young
"Those Fabulous Fabricators and Their Finish Fetish,"
''L.A. Weekly'', January 9, 2008. Accessed April 15, 2019. and later, at Arnold, a Frankfurt-based company. The dealers funded the project in part by selling works to collectors before they were fabricated. In 1999, his 1988 "Pink Panther" sculpture sold at auction for US$1.8 million, and he returned to the Sonnabend gallery. Well aware of Koons' bottomless needs and demands, Ileana Sonnabend and Antonio Homem, her gallery director and adopted son, nevertheless welcomed him back; in all likelihood they sensed (correctly, it turned out) that he was poised for a glorious second act—something that only he, among his generation of overpublicized artists, has so far managed to pull off. Koons, however, no longer confines himself to a single gallery. Larry Gagosian, the colossus of New York dealers, agreed to finance the completion of all the unfinished "Celebration" work, in exchange for exclusive rights to sell it.

In 2006, Koons presented ''Hanging Heart'', a 9-foot-tall highly polished, steel heart, one of a series of five differently colored examples, part of his ''Celebration'' series."Jeff Koon's Hanging Heart Sets Record At Auction"
, Culturekiosque, 15 November 2007. Large sculptures from that series were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2008. Later additions to the series include ''Balloon Swan'' (2004–2011), an 11.5-foot (3.5-meter), stainless-steel bird, ''Balloon Rabbit'' (2005–2010), and ''Balloon Monkey'', all for which children's party favors are reconceived as mesmerizing monumental forms.Jeff Koons: New Paintings and Sculpture, May 9 – June 29, 2013
Gagosian Gallery, New York.

The series also includes, in addition to sculptures, sixteenJeff Koons: Cracked Egg (Blue), October 2 – December 22, 2006
Gagosian Gallery, London. oil paintings.Jeff Koons's giant Easter Egg with bow in Boijmans, 22 February 2012 – 2015
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

''Easyfun'' and ''Easyfun-Ethereal''

Commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim in 1999, Koons created the first seven paintings of the new series, ''Easyfun'', comprising paintings and wall-mounted sculptures.Jeff Koons: Easyfun-Ethereal, March 10 – April 21, 2018
Gagosian Gallery, New York. In 2001, Koons undertook a series of paintings, ''Easyfun-Ethereal'', using a collage approach that combined bikinis, food, and landscapes painted under his supervision by assistants. The series eventually expanded to twenty-four paintings.

''Split-Rocker''

In 2000, Koons designed ''Split-Rocker'', his second floral sculpture made of stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, and an internal irrigation system, which was first shown at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, France. Like ''Puppy'', it is covered with around 27,000 live flowers,Miranda S. Spivack (June 24, 2013)
Rales family unveils plans for major new Glenstone museum in Potomac
''Washington Post''. including petunias, begonias, impatiens, geraniums and marigolds.Carol Vogel (May 29, 2014)
A Jeff Koons Sculpture Is Coming to 30 Rock
''The New York Times''. Weighing 150 tons and soaring over 37 feet high, ''Split-Rocker'' is composed of two halves: one based on a toy pony of one of Koons' sons, the other based on a toy dinosaur. Together, they form the head of a giant child's rocker. Koons produced just two editions of the sculpture. As of 2014, he owns one of them; the other is displayed at Glenstone in Maryland. At Glenstone, ''Split-Rocker'' is in bloom from mid-May to mid-October, and requires daily caretaking during that period. In summer 2014 ''Split-Rocker'' was installed at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City for several months in coincidence with the opening of Koons' retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

''Popeye'' and ''Hulk Elvis'' series

Paintings and sculptures from the ''Popeye'' series, which Koons began in 2002, feature the cartoon figures of Popeye

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