Lady gaga art pop jeff koons biography
Jeff Koons
American sculptor and painter (born 1955)
Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; provincial January 21, 1955)[1] is set American artist recognized for her majesty work dealing with popular courtesy and his sculptures depicting common objects, including balloon animals understandable in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces.
He lives and writings actions in both New York Plug and his hometown of Royalty, Pennsylvania. His works have sell for substantial sums, including finish least two record auction prices for a work by copperplate living artist: US$58.4 million misjudge Balloon Dog (Orange) in 2013[2] and US$91.1 million for Rabbit in 2019.[3][4]
Critics come sharply irrelevant in their views of Koons.
Some view his work slightly pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his check up as kitsch, crass, and home-produced on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are ham-fisted hidden meanings or critiques con his works.[5][6]
Early life
Koons was resident in York, Pennsylvania, to Rhetorician Koons and Nancy Loomis.
Ruler father[7] was a furniture merchant and interior decorator. His jocular mater was a seamstress.[8] When fair enough was nine years old, top father would place old magician paintings that Koons copied shaft signed in the window dear his shop in an consider to attract visitors.[9] As deft child he went door-to-door rear 1 school selling gift-wrapping paper take candy to earn pocket money.[10] As a teenager he reverenced Salvador Dalí so much stray he visited him at distinction St.
Regis Hotel in Additional York City.[11]
Koons studied painting engagement the Maryland Institute College possession Art in Baltimore before shipment to the School of distinction Art Institute of Chicago, circle he studied from 1975 abut 1976.[12][13] While a student handy the Art Institute, Koons reduction the artist Ed Paschke, who became a major influence beginning for whom Koons worked introduction a studio assistant in birth late 1970s.[14] He lived break through Lakeview, and then in say publicly Pilsen neighborhood at Halsted Road and 19th Street.[15]
After college, Koons moved to New York make a way into 1977[16] and worked at rectitude membership desk of the Museum of Modern Art[17] while home himself as an artist.
Significant this time, he dyed reward hair red and often wore a pencil mustache, after Salvador Dalí.[16] In 1980, he became licensed to sell mutual capital and stocks and began crucial as a Wall Streetcommodities intermediary at First Investors Corporation. Funding a summer with his parents in Sarasota, Florida, where put your feet up briefly worked as a federal canvasser, Koons returned to Fresh York and found a pristine career as a commodities intermediary, first at Clayton Brokerage Happening and then at Smith Barney.[16]
Work
Following his graduation from the Sharp Institute in Chicago in 1976, Koons made his way single out for punishment New York City.
There, crystal-clear moved away from creating representations of his personal fantasies existing began to explore objective attention, commerce, and politics.[18] He rosiness to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a hour of artists who explored authority meaning of art in splendid newly media-saturated era with Pre-new The New series.[19][18]With push back came the establishment of straight factory-like studio located in clean loft at the corner livestock Houston Street and Broadway border line New York in SoHo.
Be with you was staffed with over 30 assistants, each assigned to splendid different aspect of producing ruler work—in a similar mode thanks to Andy Warhol's Factory. Koons's drudgery is produced using a route known as art fabrication.[20] Unconfirmed 2019, Koons had a 1,500 m2 (16,000 sq ft) studio factory near grandeur old Hudson rail yards[21] flowerbed Chelsea employing 90 to 120[21] assistants to produce his work.[8] More recently, Koons has downsized staffing and shifted to optional extra automated forms of production see relocated to a much shrivel studio space.[22] He now uses technology to create his cultured references on computers and color-corrects them until he is depressed with the results.[23] To state consistency, Koons implemented a color-by-numbers system, so that each influence his assistants[24] could execute empress canvases and sculptures as pretend they had been done "by a single hand".[7] Throughout career, he has consistently explored themes such as consumerist command, seduction, banality, and childhood, between others.[25]
Early Works and Inflatables
Jeff Koons first began experimenting with goodness use of ready-made objects humbling modes of display in diadem apartment in 1976.
His affinity with the extravagant world delightful luxurious goods and their build on affordable counterparts led him guard collect items like toys, bimetallic finishes, leopard skin, and porcelain.[18] Between 1977 and 1979 Koons produced four separate artworks, which he later referred to tempt Early Works. In 1978 lighten up began working on his Inflatables series, consisting of inflatable bloom and a rabbit of a variety of heights and colors, positioned go along with mirrors.[26] Koons drew revelation from Robert Smithson's emphasis accrue display and connected his be troubled to his father's furniture luggage compartment displays.
He documented his run through photography, using it translation a means of exploring fluctuating installation techniques.[18]
The Pre-New, The New, and Equilibrium series
Since 1979 Koons has produced work within series.[27] His early work was personal the form of conceptual figurine, an example of which evenhanded The Pre-New, a series snare domestic objects attached to birds fixtures, resulting in strange new-found configurations.
Another example is The New, a series of vacuum-cleaners, often selected for brand blackguard that appealed to the bravura like the iconic Hoover, which he had mounted in light Perspex boxes. Koons first manifest these pieces in the transom of the New Museum conduct yourself New York in 1980. Crystalclear chose a limited combination rule vacuum cleaners and arranged them in cabinets accordingly, juxtaposing grandeur verticality of the upright shop with the squat cylinders surrounding the "Shelton Wet/Dry drum" shop.
At the museum, the machines were displayed as if pin down a showroom, and oriented go around a central red fluorescent lightbox with just the words "The New" written on it sort if it were announcing tedious new concept or marketing brand.[28] They were shown again speak a major solo show bequeath Jeff Koons: The New Cased Works at Daniel Weinberg Drift in 1987.[29]
Another example for Koons's early work is The Steadiness Series (1983), consisting of acquaintance to three basketballs floating monitor distilled water, a project grandeur artist had researched with magnanimity help of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman.[7] The Total Steadiness Tanks are completely filled assort distilled water and a petite amount of ordinary salt, pass on assist the hollow balls confine remaining suspended in the midst of the liquid.
In out second version, the 50/50 Tanks, only half the tank keep to filled with distilled water, explore the result that the forcefulness float half in and fraction out of the water.[30] Limit addition, Koons conceived and groundless five unique works for integrity Encased series (1983–1993/98), sculptures consisting of stacked sporting balls (four rows of six basketballs wad, and one row of sextuplet soccer balls) with their nifty cardboard packaging in glass boast case.[31] Also part of character Equilibrium series are posters featuring basketball stars in Nike advertisements and 10 bronze objects, in compensation lifesaving gear.
Statuary series
In 1986, Jeff Koons introduced the Statuary series, featuring ten pieces put off reimagined his earlier inflatable set attendants from the 1970s. The serial aimed to illustrate how perform often mirrors self-perception and evolves into decorative expression by performance a panoramic view of backup singers.
The sculptures drew inspiration hold up historical figures like Louis Cardinal and Bob Hope, as be a success as other art historical themes and sources. Through Statuary, Koons redirected his artistic focus promoting the concept of artistic aroma and the societal role unravel art.[32][18] He incorporated some readytowear objects, including the inflatable fur, and transformed them into supremely polished stainless-steel pieces.
This forced to the creation of individual of his most iconic scowl, Rabbit (1986).[18]
There are three twin versions of Rabbit. One cipher was previously part of divulge collector Stefan Edlis's personal group, but it now resides chimp a gift at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Metropolis and another in The Solid Museum in Los Angeles.[33] Remit May 15, 2019, Jeff Koons set a record for pinnacle expensive piece sold by natty living artist, for the marketing of "Rabbit".
The third trade of the piece was put on the market at Christie's Auction House pointless US$80 million which. After containing auctioneer's fees, the final disposal price of "Rabbit" was US$91,075,000.[3][4]
The Rabbit has since returned come to its original soft form, at an earlier time many times larger at excellent than 50 feet high, uncomprehending to the air.
On Oct 15, 2009, the giant tinny monochrome color rabbit used beside the 2007 Macy'sThanksgiving day parade[34] was put on display make up for Nuit Blanche in the Eaton Centre in Toronto.[35] The provoke objects of the series join objects Koons found in memento shops and baroque imagery, thereby playing with the distinction among low art and high art.[36]
Luxury and Degradation series and Kiepenkerl
First shown in Koons's eponymous exhibitions at the short-lived International Fumble Monument Gallery, New York, stream at Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1986, the Luxury and Degradation series is systematic group of works thematically centralised on alcohol.[37] This group be a factor a stainless steel travel social gathering cabinet, a Baccarat crystal gumption and other hand-made renderings be in possession of alcohol-related paraphernalia, as well likewise reprinted and framed ads paper drinks such as Gordon's Machine ("I Could Go for Notion Gordon's"), Hennessy ("Hennessy, The Refined Way to Lay Down rendering Law"), Bacardi ("Aquí...
el nanna sabor del ron Bacardi"), Dewars ("The Empire State of Scotch"), Martell ("I Assume You Guzzle Martell") and Frangelico ("Stay vibrate Tonight" and "Find a Soundless Table")[38] in seductively intensified emblem on canvas[8] Koons appropriated these advertisements and revalued them impervious to recontextualizing them into artworks.
They "deliver a critique of habitual advertising that supports Baudrillard's contemptuous view of the obscene promiscuousness of consumer signs".[39] Another labour, Jim Beam – J.B. Insurgent Engine (1986), is based decrease a commemorative, collectible in flask in the form of expert locomotive that was created provoke Jim Beam; however, Koons presumed this model and had establish cast in gleaming stainless-steel.[40] Dignity train model cast in outfit titled Jim Beam – Part Car (1986) even contains Jim Beam bourbon.[41][42] With the Luxury and Degradation series Koons interfered into the realms of glory social.
He created an pretend and gleaming surface which titular a proletarian luxury. It was interpreted as seduction by false display because it was fake magnificence. Being the producer of that deception brought him to unblended kind of leadership, as take steps commented himself.[43]
The same material short vacation stainless steel was used school the statue of Kiepenkerl.
Stern being rebuilt in the Fifties, the figure of the traveling trader was replaced by Jeff Koons in 1987 for decency decennial Skulptur Projekte exhibition. Perception on a central square personal Münster, the statue retained topping certain cultural power as practised nostalgic symbol of the past.[44] During the production process, influence foundry where the piece was being made wanted to clunk the ceramic shell off also soon, which resulted in excellence piece being bent and twisted.
Koons decided to bring call a specialist and give blue blood the gentry piece "radical plastic surgery." Care for this experience he felt liberated: "I was now free ingratiate yourself with work with objects that frank not necessarily pre-exist. I could create models."[45]
Banality series
Main article: Bromide (sculpture series)
Koons then moved cut of meat to the Banality series.
Redundant this project he engaged workshops in Germany and Italy give it some thought had a long tradition be incumbent on working in ceramic, porcelain, perch wood.[16] The series culminated cage up 1988 with Michael Jackson forward Bubbles, a series of join life-size gold-leaf plated porcelain statues of the sitting singer hugging Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee.
Triad years later, one of these sold at Sotheby's New Royalty for US$5.6 million.[46] Two observe these sculptures are now mass the San Francisco Museum pills Modern Art and the Finalize Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) compromise downtown Los Angeles. The perceive was included in a 2004 retrospective at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art bear hug Oslo which traveled a collection later to the Helsinki Infiltrate Art Museum.
It also featured in his second retrospective soft the Museum of Contemporary Know about, Chicago, in 2008. The carving is currently part of position collection at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art jab Tjuvholmen in Oslo.[47] His drain Christ and the Lamb (1988) has been analyzed as put down acknowledgment and critique of depiction spiritual and meditative power go in for the Rococo.[48]
Anticipating a less outstrip generous critical response to king 1988 Banality series exhibition, touch all of his new objects made in an edition second three,[49] allowing for simultaneous, very alike shows at galleries in Spanking York, Cologne, and Chicago, Koons devised the Art Magazine Ads series (1988–1989).[50] Placed in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Break into pieces, and Art News, the ads were designed as promotions collect his own gallery exhibitions.[51] Koons also issued Signature Plate, fraudster edition for Parkett magazine, critical of a photographic decal in colours on a porcelain plate tally gold-plated rim.[52] Arts journalist Arifa Akbar reported for The Independent that in "an era conj at the time that artists were not regarded laugh 'stars', Koons went to fantastic lengths to cultivate his market persona by employing an surfacing consultant".
Featuring photographs by Unequivocal Chedgey, Koons placed "advertisements slot in international art magazines of mortal physically surrounded by the trappings portend success" and gave interviews "referring to himself in the gear person".[20]
Made in Heaven series
In 1989, the Whitney Museum and closefitting guest curator Marvin Heiferman responsibility Koons to make an cut down about the media on undiluted billboard[7] for the show "Image World: Art and Media Culture".
The billboard was meant brand an advertisement for an unmade movie, entitled Made in Heaven.[53] Koons employed his then-wife Ilona Staller ("Cicciolina") as a working model in the shoot that botuliform the basis of the derived work for the Whitney, Made in Heaven (1990–1991).[54] Including scrunch up with such titles as Dirty Ejaculation and Ilonaʼs Asshole, authority series of enormous grainy[55] photographs printed on canvas, glassworks, concentrate on sculptures portrayed Koons and Staller in highly explicit sexual positions and created considerable controversy.
Righteousness paintings of the series remark art from the Baroque dispatch Rococo periods—among others, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher—and also draw upon grandeur breakthroughs of early modern painters as Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet.[56]
The series was first shown at the 1990 Venice Biennale.[57] Koons reportedly destroyed much have a high regard for the work when Staller took their son Ludwig with bake to Italy.[58] In celebration capture Made in Heaven's 20th day, Luxembourg & Dayan chose concern present a redux edition outline the series.[56][59][55] The Whitney Museum also exhibited several of honourableness photographs on canvas in their 2014 retrospective.
Puppy
Koons was fret among the 44 American artists selected to exhibit their be anxious in Documenta 9 in 1992,[60] but was commissioned by combine art dealers to create straighten up piece for nearby Arolsen Hall in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Class result was Puppy, a 43 ft (13 m) tall topiary sculpture attack a West Highland White Terrier puppy, executed in a school group of flowers (including Marigolds, Begonias, Impatiens, Petunias, and Lobelias)[61] notice a transparent color-coated chrome intact steel substructure.
The self-cleaning floret would grow for the exact length of time that blue blood the gentry piece was exhibited.[62] The largest part and location of Puppy -the courtyard of a baroque palace- acknowledged the mass audience.[63] Stern the outbreak that followed emperor Made in Heaven series, Koons decided to make "an opinion that communicated warmth and affection to people."[64] In 1995, hurt a co-venture between Museum female Contemporary Art, Kaldor Public Supposition Projects and Sydney Festival,[65] rendering sculpture was dismantled and re-erected at the Museum of Recent Art on Sydney Harbour perfectly a new, more permanent, untarnished steel armature with an internecine irrigation system.
While the Arolsen Puppy had 20,000 plants, nobility Sydney version held around 60,000.[66]
The piece was purchased in 1997 by the Solomon R. Philanthropist Foundation and installed on glory terrace outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.[67] Before the dedication be suspicious of the museum, an Euskadi Symphony Askatasuna (ETA) trio disguised significance gardeners attempted to plant explosive-filled flowerpots near the sculpture,[68] on the other hand was foiled by Basque constabulary officer Jose María Aguirre, who then was shot dead get ahead of ETA members.[69][70] Currently the quadrangular in which the statue research paper placed bears the name archetypal Aguirre.
In the summer admonishment 2000, the statue traveled take home New York City for shipshape and bristol fashion temporary exhibition at Rockefeller Center.[61]
Media mogul Peter Brant and coronet wife, model Stephanie Seymour, authorized Koons to create a match of the Bilbao statue Puppy (1993) for their Connecticut demesne, the Brant Foundation Art Learn about Center.[71] In 1998, a petty version of Puppy was unconfined as a white glazed tableware vase, in an edition sponsor 3000.[72]
Celebration series
Koons's Celebration was loom honor the ardently hoped-for reinstate of Ludwig from Rome [citation needed] .
The series, consisting of a series of large-scale sculptures and paintings of become larger dogs, Valentine hearts, diamonds, current Easter eggs, was conceived overlook 1994. Some of the throw somebody into disarray are still being fabricated.[citation needed] Each of the 20 divergent sculptures in the series be accessibles in five differently colored "unique versions",[74] including the artist's chipped Egg (Blue) which won high-mindedness 2008 Charles Wollaston Award bring back the most distinguished work clear up the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition.[75] The Diamond pieces were built between 1994 and 2005, idea of shiny stainless steel seven-feet wide.[76]
Created in an edition endlessly five versions, his later pointless Tulips (1995–2004) consists of shipshape and bristol fashion bouquet of multicolor balloon flower bloom blown up to gargantuan size (more than 2 m (6.6 ft) high-pitched and 5 m (16 ft) across).[77] Koons started to work on Balloon Flower in 1995.[78]
Koons was dynamic to finish the series be grateful for time for a 1996 spectacle at the Solomon R.
Altruist Museum in New York, on the contrary the show was ultimately canceled because of production delays current cost overruns.[79] When "Celebration" grant-money ran out, the staff was laid off, a crew assiduousness two: Gary McCraw, Koons's plant manager, who had been get a message to him since 1990, and Justine Wheeler, an artist from Southernmost Africa, who had arrived focal 1995 and eventually took manipulate of the sculpture operation.
Birth artist convinced his primary collectors Dakis Joannou, Peter Brant, viewpoint Eli Broad, along with dealers Jeffrey Deitch, Anthony d'Offay, crucial Max Hetzler, to invest decisively in the costly fabrication position the Celebration series at Meridional California-based Carlson & Company (including his Balloon Dog and Moon series),[79][80] and later, at Treasonist, a Frankfurt-based company.
The dealers funded the project in pin down by selling works to collectors before they were fabricated.[81]
In 2006, Koons presented Hanging Heart, clean up 9-foot-tall highly polished, steel line of reasoning, one of a series atlas five differently colored examples, quintessence of his Celebration series.[82] Ample sculptures from that series were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New Royalty in 2008.
Later additions finish with the series include Balloon Swan (2004–2011), an 11.5-foot (3.5-meter), stainless-steel bird,[83]Balloon Rabbit (2005–2010), and Balloon Monkey, all for which apprentice party favors are reconceived gorilla mesmerizing monumental forms.[84]
The series as well includes, in addition to sculptures, sixteen[85] oil paintings.[86]
Easyfun and Easyfun-Ethereal
Commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim gradient 1999, Koons created the control seven paintings of the novel series, Easyfun, comprising paintings shaft wall-mounted sculptures.[87] In 2001, Koons undertook a series of paintings, Easyfun-Ethereal, using a collage form that combined bikinis, food, nearby landscapes painted under his superintendence by assistants.[88] The series one day expanded to twenty-four paintings.[87]
Split-Rocker
In 2000, Koons designed Split-Rocker, his quickly floral sculpture made of untainted steel, soil, geotextile fabric, take up an internal irrigation system, which was first shown at authority Palais des Papes in Avignon, France.
Like Puppy, it evolution covered with around 27,000 existent flowers,[89] including petunias, begonias, impatiens, geraniums and marigolds.[90] Weighing Cardinal tons and soaring over 37 feet high, Split-Rocker is unexcitable of two halves: one homemade on a toy pony connection to one of Koons's issue, the other based on nifty toy dinosaur.
Together, they grow up the head of a high child's rocker. Koons produced unite editions of the sculpture. Orangutan of 2014, he owns double of them;[90] the other levelheaded displayed at Glenstone in Maryland.[89] At Glenstone, Split-Rocker is slender bloom from mid-May to mid-October, and requires daily caretaking close to that period.[91] In summer 2014 Split-Rocker was installed at Industrialist Plaza in New York Get into for several months in cooccurrence with the opening of Koons's retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Popeye topmost Hulk Elvis series
Paintings and sculptures from the Popeye series, which Koons began in 2002, discourse the cartoon figures of Popeye and Olive Oyl.[92] One specified item is a stainless brace reproduction of a mass-market Arrhythmia Popeye figurine.[93] The artist choice also make use of extensive animals again, this time include combination with ladders, trashcans see fences.
To create these sculptures, the toys get a contact of coating after finding magnanimity right shape. Then a rockhard copy is made and spiral to the foundry to take off cast in aluminium. Back tab the studio the sculptures pronounce painted in order to notch up the shiny look of description original inflatables.[94] For these surrealist installations, Acrobat in particular, Koons got inspiration from the Port Imagist H.C.
Westermann.[95] The Popeye sculpture was purchased by potentate Steve Wynn for $28 jillion and it is displayed absent the casino entrance at Wynn's Encore Boston Harbor hotel stand for casino property.[96]
Hulk Elvis is great work series by Koons begeted between 2004 and 2014.[97] Grandeur works range from precision-machined discolour sculptures—inspired by an inflatable love the popular comic book exemplar and extruded in three dimensions—to large-scale oil paintings.[98] The research paper series' title combines the approved comic book hero Hulk remain the pop icon Elvis.
Prestige triple image of the Dead body figure recalls Andy Warhol's silk-screen printingTriple Elvis (1963), regarding both the multiplication and the ask of the Hulk figure.[99]
According get snarled the artist, the Hulk Elvis series with its strong, dauntless image of the Hulk represents "a very high-testosterone body firm footing work".[100] Koons also perceives goodness series as "a bridge among East and West", since adroit parallel might be drawn in the middle of the comic book hero Shell and Asian guardian Gods.[101]
The stable works Hulk (Friends) and Hulks (Bell) (both 2004–2012) feature on the surface inflatable Incredible Hulks that dole out almost a ton each very last are made of bronze obtain wood.[102] The sculpture Hulk (Organ) (2004–2014) includes a fully all-purpose musical instrument whose potential depressed sounds match the figure's booming and masculine appearance.[103]
The series' paintings are collages made of some photoshop layers.
The images congregate from abstract landscapes to sprinkling of American iconography (trains, parentage, carriages) and comprise characters much as the Hulk or harangue inflatable plastic monkey.[100] The place paintings often have explicit recall implicit sexual content. For model, a recurrent crude line pulling of a vulva refers undulation Courbet's L'Origine du monde (1866).[104]
The Hulk Elvis series has antiquated exhibited at a number show consideration for international art venues such gorilla the Gagosian Gallery in Writer (2007), the Gagosian Gallery flash Hong Kong, China (2014) refuse the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere eliminate Vienna, Austria (2015).[105]
Antiquity series
In 2008, Jeff Koons started working imposter his Antiquity series, delving succeed themes of the portrayal emulate eros, fertility, and feminine celestial being across the history of art.[106][107] At the center of coach scene in the Antiquity paintings (2009–2013) is a famous old or classical sculpture, meticulously rendered in oil paint and weighing machine to the same size introduce the sculptures.
The equally out-and-out backdrops include an Arcadian vision.[84] Koons makes use of modern technology, including CT scans at an earlier time digital imaging, to produce significance metal sculptures. He reinterprets consecutive figures through the creation carefulness balloon-like sculptures, such as honesty Metallic Venus, and by combining representative figures and characters unapproachable comic books.[106][108]
Referring to the elderly Roman marble statue Callipygian Urania, Metallic Venus (2010–2012) was thankful of high chromium stainless put in order with transparent color coating arena live flowering plants.[102]
In Ballerinas (2010–2014), Koons depicts figurines of dancers, derived from decorative porcelain contortion designed by Ukrainian artist Oksana Zhnikrup, at the imposing gauge of classical sculpture.[109][110][111][112]
Gazing Ball series
In this series presented at Gagosian Gallery in 2015, Koons has taken 35 masterpieces, including Manet'sDéjeuner sur l'Herbe, Géricault'sRaft of description Medusa and Rembrandt'sSelf-Portrait Wearing splendid Hat, had them repainted uphold oil on canvas, and extend a little shelf, painted rightfully if it had sprouted tangentially from the image.
Each snitch includes a blue glass gazing ball that sits on pure painted aluminum shelf attached go along with the front of the sketch account. Both viewer and painting barren reflected in the gazing ball.[113][114]
Gazing Ball takes its name flight the mirrored spherical ornaments often found on lawns, gardens, stomach patios around Koons's childhood caress in Pennsylvania.[115] After creating Gazing Ball paintings, Koons also uncomplicated several white sculptures from loftiness Greco-Roman era along with mundane utilitarian objects encountered in today's suburban and rural landscape, much as mailboxes and a birdbath.
Apollo series
In June 2022, Dakis Jouannou commissioned Koons to draw up plans an artwork for his extent at DESTE Foundation for Advanced Art, on the Greek cay of Hydra. Koons created position series Apollo, including a chisel titled Apollo Wind Spinner (2020–2022), a 9.1 meter (30-foot) state-run reflective wind spinner above influence Slaughterhouse art space.
The walls within the Slaughterhouse have back number transformed by using as class base the ancient frescoes running away Boscoreale, near Pompeii. The provide includes several other new scowl including a pair of discolor Nike sneakers, Gazing Ball Tripod (2020–2022), and Plato's Solid Forms Wind Spinners (2020–2022).[116]
Recent work
For justness 2007–2008 season in the Vienna State Opera, Koons designed significance large-scale picture (176 sqm) Geisha as part of the luminous series "Safety Curtain", conceived make wet museum in progress.[117] Koons insincere with American pop performer Muhammadan Gaga on her 2013 mansion album Artpop, including the thing of its cover artwork featuring a sculpture he made promote to Lady Gaga.[118] In September 2014, the bi-annual arts and the public publication GARAGE Magazine published Koons's first ever digital artwork tail the front of its impress edition.
The piece, titled Lady Bug, is an augmented event sculpture that can only happen to viewed on mobile devices say again a GARAGE Magazine app, which allows viewers to explore rank piece from a variety late angles as if standing figurative top of it.[119]
In 2012, Koons bought Advanced Stone Technologies, fraudster offshoot of the non-profit Lexicologist Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture's stone division.
He moved character high-tech stone workshop from Another Jersey to a larger, 60,000 sq ft (5,600 m2) space near Morrisville, Means County, Pennsylvania. The facility exists solely to fabricate Koons's contortion made of stone.[120]
In 2013 Koons created the sculpture Gazing Brusque (Farnese Hercules), which was carried away by the Farnese Hercules.[121] Nobility sculpture is made from snowy plaster and can be taken as perpetuating colorism in in any event we view the ancient world.[121]
Other projects
In 1999, Koons commissioned out song about himself on Momus's album Stars Forever.[122]
A drawing much the same to his Tulip Balloons was placed on the front fiasco of the Internet search device Google.
The drawing greeted name who visited Google's main side on April 30, 2008, duct May 1, 2008.[123][124]
In 2006 Koons appeared on Artstar, an impromptu television series set in character New York art world. Closure had a minor role unsubtle the 2008 film Milk performing state assemblyman Art Agnos.[125]
In Sep 2012, New York Governor Apostle Cuomo gave Koons the profit of helping to review excellence designs for a new Emancipationist Zee Bridge.[126]
In 2019, Koons unveil Bouquet of Tulips, an 11-meter high commemorative sculpture in Town modelled on the Statue emulate Liberty, honoring the victims do admin the November 2015 attacks.[127][128]
In Feb 2024, a SpaceX rocket sharp 125 of Koon's stainless ready miniature moon sculptures departed free yourself of the Kennedy Space Center wonderful Florida.
The sculptures, named provision historical figures such as Sculptor da Vinci and Billie Short holiday, were part of a better project involving a lunar town designed by Intuitive Machines. Authority lander, which also carried NASA equipment, reached the Moon acquaintance February 22.[129] Koons, inspired from one side to the ot President Kennedy's vision of margin exploration, saw this project slightly a way to inspire glee club.
This endeavor, which included set-up for larger sculptures on Hoe and corresponding NFTs, aimed give out be the first authorized curtail on the moon, protected junior to the Artemis Accords.[130]
Curating
Koons acted sort curator of an Ed Paschke exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Virgin York, in 2009.[131] He as well curated an exhibition in 2010 of works from the top secret collection of Greek billionaire Dakis Joannou at the New Museum in New York City.
Illustriousness exhibition, Skin Fruit: Selections superior the Dakis Joannou Collection, generated debate concerning cronyism within magnanimity art world as Koons even-handed heavily collected by Joannou paramount had previously designed the superficial of Joannou's yacht Guilty.[132][133]
BMW Illustration Car
Koons was the artist dubbed to design the seventeenth increase twofold the series of BMW "Art Cars".
His artwork was utilitarian businesslik to a race-spec E92 BMW M3, and revealed to primacy public at The Pompidou Heart in Paris on June 2, 2010.[134] Backed by BMW Motorsport, the car then competed make certain the 2010 24 Hours assault Le Mans in France.[135]
Collaborations
In 1989, Koons and fellow artist Actor Kippenberger worked together on differentiation issue of the art annals Parkett; the following year, Koons designed an exhibition poster verify Kippenberger.[136]
In 2013, Koons collaborated look after American singer-songwriter and performance manager Lady Gaga for her base studio album, ARTPOP.[137] The recording cover depicts a nude figure of Gaga made by Koons behind a blue ball form, and pieces of other zone works in the background specified as Birth of Venus varnished by Sandro Botticelli, which carried away Gaga's image through the recent era, including in her concerto video for "Applause" and loftiness performance of the song heroic act the 2013 MTV Video Harmony Awards.[138] The image of high-mindedness cover was revealed piece-by-piece seep in a social marketing campaign at her fans had to chirr the Twitter hashtag "#iHeartARTPOP" communication unlock it.[139] The song "Applause" itself includes the lyrics "One second I'm a Koons, redouble suddenly the Koons is me."
In April 2017, Koons collaborated with the French luxury course of action house Louis Vuitton for ethics "Masters Collection" and designed elegant series of handbags and backpacks featuring the reproductions of surmount favorite masterpieces by the A range of Masters, such as Leonardo beer Vinci, Titian, Vincent van Painter, Peter Paul Rubens and Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
Later that year significant presented another handful of suitcases and accessories featuring the reproductions of works by Claude Painter, J. M. W. Turner, Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin and François Boucher.[140] The prices range depart from $585 for a key succession to $4,000 for the capacious carryall.[141] he also collaborated letter singer Cupcakke multiple times accomplish 2019.
Wine
Koons has also crop up b grow some fine wine-related commissions. Jammy December 2012, Chateau Mouton Banker announced that Koons was grandeur artist for their 2010 crop label – a tradition ditch was started in 1946. New artists to design labels cover Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró, in the thick of others.[142] In August 2013, Mess Pérignon released their 2004 origin, with a special edition organize by Koons, as well bit a made-to-order case called honourableness 'Balloon Venus'.
This has undiluted recommended retail price of €15,000.[citation needed]
Charity
From February 15 to Stride 6, 2008, Koons donated clean up private tour of his plant to the Hereditary Disease Begin for auction on Charitybuzz.[citation needed] From his limited-edition 2010 Tulip designs for Kiehl's Crème notable Corps, a portion of goodness proceeds went to the Koons Family Institute, an initiative have available the International Centre for Lacking & Exploited Children.[21] Since authority relationship with the International Middle began, Koons has given inspect US$4.3 million to the Society that bears his family's name.[143]
Exhibitions
Since a 1980 window installation molder the New Museum of Virgin Art in New York, Koons's work has been widely professed internationally in solo and rank exhibitions.
In 1986, he arrived in a group show silent Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, Stumble on Minoru Lang and Meyer Vaisman at Sonnabend Gallery in Spanking York. In 1997, the frenchman Galerie Jerome de Noirmont uncontrolled his first solo show tabled Europe. His Made in Heaven series was first shown trouble the Venice Biennale in 1990.[57]
As a young artist, Koons was included in many exhibitions curated by Richard Milazzo including The New Capital at White Columns in 1984, Paravision at Postmasters Gallery in 1985, Cult impressive Decorum at Tibor De Nagy Gallery in 1986, Time Make sure of Time at Diane Brown Heading in 1986, Spiritual America fob watch CEPA in 1986, and Art at the End of influence Social at The Rooseum, Malmö, Sweden in 1988.
These exhibitions would be alongside other famed artists such as Ross Bleckner, Joel Otterson, and Kevin Larmon.[144]
His museum solo shows include say publicly Museum of Contemporary Art problem Chicago (1988), Walker Art Feelings in Minneapolis (1993), Deutsche Industrialist in Berlin (2000), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2001), the Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli (2003), and regular retrospective survey at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Pass on, Oslo (2004), which traveled touch the Helsinki City Art Museum (2005).
In 2008, the Go on a trip series was shown at rendering Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and reflexology the roof of the Urban Museum of Art.[145]
Considered as government first retrospective in France, ethics 2008 exhibition of 17 Koons sculptures at the Château relief Versailles also marked the head ambitious display of a coeval American artist organized by position château.
The New York Times reported that "several dozen dynasty demonstrated outside the palace gates" in a protest arranged rough a little-known, right-wing group committed to French artistic purity. Prospect was also criticized that xc percent of the US$2.8 trillion in financing for the sight curiosity came from private patrons, predominantly François Pinault.[146]
The May 31 – September 21, 2008, Koons showing at the Museum of Coexistent Art, Chicago,[8][147][148] which was in foreign lands publicized in the press, beggared the museum's attendance record mount 86,584 visitors.[149][150] The exhibition aim numerous works from the MCA collection, along with recent paintings and sculptures by the magician.
The retrospective exhibition reflects prestige MCA's commitment to Koons's rip off as it presented the artist's first American survey in 1988.[151] For the final exhibition girder its Marcel Breuer building, rank Whitney Museum is planning be required to present a Koons retrospective subtract collaboration with the Museum all but Contemporary Art, Los Angeles playing field the Centre Pompidou, Paris.[152]
In July 2009, Koons had his final major solo show in Author, at the Serpentine Gallery.
Honoured Jeff Koons: Popeye Series, birth exhibit included cast aluminum models of children's pool toys gift "dense, realist paintings of Popeye holding his can of riches or smoking his pipe, neat as a pin red lobster looming over her highness head".[153]
In May 2012, Koons difficult his first major solo strut in Switzerland, at the Beyeler Museum in Basel, entitled Jeff Koons.
Shown are works deprive three series: The New,Banality predominant Celebration as well as say publicly flowered sculpture Split-Rocker.[154]
Also in 2012, Jeff Koons. The Painter articulate Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt focussed basically on the artist's development monkey a painter, while in decency show Jeff Koons.
The Sculptor at the Liebieghaus in City, the sculptures by Jeff Koons entered enter into dialogues narrow the historical building and dialect trig sculpture collection spanning five millennia.[155] Together, both shows form rectitude largest showing of Koons's bradawl to date.[156][157]
The artist enjoyed well-ordered 2014 retrospective at the Manufacturer Museum of American Art crucial New York.
Scott Indrisek, verbal skill for ARTINFO.com, described it restructuring "brash, fairly entertaining, and laugh digestible as a pack near M&Ms".[158]
In 2019 an exhibition dubbed Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean was held at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, United Kingdom.[159]
Recognition
Koons received the BZ Cultural Accord from a local Berlin daily in 2000 and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 2001.
He was named a Vocalist of the French Legion surrounding Honor in 2002 and ergo promoted to Officier in 2007.[160] He received an honoroary degree from the School of rank Art Institute of Chicago suppose 2008.[161] He was given significance 2008 Wollaston Award from position Royal Academy of Arts fluky London.[57] In 2013 he common the U.S.
State Department's Garnishment of Arts.[162] In 2014, Koons received the Golden Plate Bestow of the American Academy give a miss Achievement presented by Awards Assembly member Wayne Thiebaud during dignity International Achievement Summit in San Francisco.[163][164][165] In 2017 he common the annual Honorary Membership Present for Outstanding Contribution to Visible Culture from the Edgar Breeze Society, University of Oxford.[166] Straightforward Honorary Professor of Sculpture make merry the Fine Arts Academy nominate Carrara, at the 250th go to celebration ceremony at the College of Fine Arts, Carrara, Italia [April 16, 2019][167]
Art market
Koons levelheaded widely collected in America advocate Europe, where some collectors win his work in depth.
Eli Broad has 24 pieces, put forward Dakis Joannou owns some 38 works from all stages waning the artist's career.[74]
Koons has antediluvian represented by dealers such orangutan Mary Boone (1979–1980), Sonnabend House (1986–2021),[168]Galerie Max Hetzler, Jérôme snug Noirmont and Gagosian Gallery.
Excellence exclusive right to the leading sale of the "Celebration" periodical was long held by Gagosian Gallery, his dominant dealer confirm many years. Since 2021, Storeroom Gallery has been representing Koons exclusively worldwide.[169]
Many of Koons's factory have been sold privately unmoving auctions.
His auction records control primarily been achieved from sovereign sculptures (especially those from culminate Celebration series), whereas his paintings are less popular.[170] In 2001, one of his three Michael Jackson and Bubbles porcelain sculptures sold for US$5.6 million. Restitution November 14, 2007, Hanging Item (Magenta/Gold) from the collection lecture Adam Lindemann, one of fin in different colors, sold reassure Sotheby's New York for US$23.6 million becoming, at the stretch, the most expensive piece vulgar a living artist ever auctioned.[82] It was bought by blue blood the gentry Gagosian Gallery in New Royalty, which the previous day esoteric purchased another Koons sculpture, Diamond (Blue), for US$11.8 million go over the top with Christie's London.[171] Gagosian appears observe have bought both Celebration playoff works on behalf of Slavic steel oligarch Victor Pinchuk.[172] Outing July 2008, his 11-foot (3.3 meter) Balloon Flower (Magenta) (1995–2000) from the collection of Thespian and Cindy Rachofsky also advertise at Christie's London for scheme auction record of US$25.7 king`s ransom.
In total, Koons was loftiness top-selling artist at auction familiarize yourself €81.3 million of sales copy the year to June 2008.[173]
During the late 2000s recession, in spite of that, art prices plummeted and sale sales of high-value works uncongenial Koons dropped 50 percent shoulder 2009.[173] A violet Hanging Heart sold for US$11 million principal a private sale.[174] However prices for the artist's earlier Extravagance and Degradation series appear thither be holding up.
The Economist reported that Thomas H. Amusement, a private-equity investor, sold Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train (1986) in a package deal brokered by Giraud Pissarro Segalot be directed at more than US$15 million.[175] Love 2012, Tulips (1995–2004) brought unembellished record auction price for Koons at Christie's, selling to capital telephone bidder for US$33.6 jillion, well above its high US$25 million estimate.[176] At Christie's pretense 2015, the oil on set sail Triple Elvis (2009) set top-notch world auction record for capital painting by the artist, mercantilism for $8,565,000, over $5 trillion more than the previous high.[177] Koons's stainless steel Rabbit (1986) sold for $91.1 million deem auction in 2019, making rolling in money the most expensive work wholesale by a living artist disapproval auction.[169]
In 2018, billionaire art artlover Steven Tananbaum brought a endeavour against Koons and Gagosian Listeners for failing to deliver span sculptures, Balloon Venus, Eros view Diana, for which he remunerative $13 million.[178] Soon after, Feeling producer Joel Silver filed wonderful similar lawsuit against Gagosion view Koons for failure to communicate an $8 million sculpture overfull 2014.
Both lawsuits were ordained in 2019 and 2020.[179]
Classification
Among curators and art collectors and starkness in the art world, Koons's work is labeled as Neo-pop or Post-Pop as part model a 1980s movement in riposte to the pared-down art expend Minimalism and Conceptualism in authority previous decade.
Koons resists specified comments: "A viewer might entice first see irony in leaden work ... but I see nobody at all. Irony causes in addition much critical contemplation".[180] Koons trash any hidden meaning in surmount artwork.[181]
He has caused controversy stomach-turning the elevation of unashamed kitsch into the high-art arena, exploiting more throwaway subjects than, stretch example, Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans.
His work Balloon Dog (1994–2000) is based on balloons rough into shape to make exceptional toy dog.
Theorist Samito Jalbuena wrote, "From the beginning vacation his controversial career, Koons bottom up the traditional notion of involvement inside and out. Focusing degree banal objects as models, inaccuracy questioned standards of normative serenity in art, and, instead, embraced the vulnerabilities of aesthetic hierarchies and taste systems."[182]
Evaluation and influence
Koons has received polarized reactions peak his work.
Critic Amy Prizefighter described his Balloon Dog by reason of "an awesome presence ... a bring to an end durable monument".[183]Jerry Saltz at artnet.com has commented on being "wowed by the technical virtuosity mushroom eye-popping visual blast" of Koons's art.[184] Koons was among leadership names in Blake Gopnik's 2011 list "The 10 Most Interfering Artists of Today", with Gopnik arguing, "Even after 30 adulthood, Koons's mashups of high bear low—a dog knotted from balloons, then enlarged into a usual monument; a life-size bust carry out Michael Jackson and his pongid in gold-and-white porcelain—still feel significant."[185]
Mark Stevens of The New Republic dismissed him as a "decadent artist [who] lacks the inventive will to do more top trivialize and italicize his themes and the tradition in which he works...
He is in the opposite direction of those who serve honesty tacky rich".[186] Michael Kimmelman bring into the light The New York Times old saying "one last, pathetic gasp clench the sort of self-promoting advertise and sensationalism that characterized rectitude worst of the 1980s" coupled with called Koons's work "artificial", "cheap", and "unabashedly cynical".[187]
In an lie comparing the contemporary art picture with show business, critic Parliamentarian Hughes wrote that Koons practical
an extreme and self-satisfied turning up of the sanctimony that attaches to big bucks.
Koons in reality does think he's Michelangelo service is not shy to maintain so. The significant thing crack that there are collectors, specially in America, who believe raise. He has the slimy licence, the gross patter about pinnacle through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres fell Florida. And the result quite good that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him.[188]
Hughes placed Koons's work just past that of Seward Johnson give orders to was quoted in a New York Times article as receipt stated that comparing their lifeworks was "like debating the merits of dog excrement versus felid excrement".[189]
He has influenced younger artists such as Damien Hirst[20] (for example, in Hirst's Hymn, place 18 ft (5.5 m) version of a- 14 in (0.36 m) anatomical toy), Pennant Daws,[190]Matthieu Laurette[191] and Mona Hatoum.[citation needed] In turn, his limited enlargement of mundane objects owes a debt to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.
Ostentatious of his work also was influenced by artists working delight in Chicago during his study destiny the Art Institute, including Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke and Rotate. C. Westermann.[192]
In 2005, he was elected as a Fellow keep from the American Academy of Art school and Sciences.[193]
Copyright infringement litigation
Koons has been sued several times make known copyright infringement over his fly off the handle of pre-existing images, the initial works of others, in potentate work.
In Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301 (2d Cir. 1992), the U.S. Court fence Appeals for the Second Plan upheld a judgment against him for his use of well-organized photograph of puppies as class basis for a sculpture, String of Puppies.[194]
Koons also lost lawsuits in United Features Syndicate, Opposition.
v. Koons, 817 F. Supp. 370 (S.D.N.Y. 1993), and Campbell v. Koons, No. 91 Civ. 6055, 1993 WL 97381 (S.D.N.Y. April 1, 1993).[citation needed]
He won one lawsuit, Blanch v. Koons, No. 03 Civ. 8026 (LLS), S.D.N.Y., November 1, 2005 (slip op.),[195] affirmed by the Shortly Circuit in October 2006, laid low over his use of capital photographic advertisement as source matter for legs and feet occupy a painting, Niagara (2000).
Blue blood the gentry court ruled that Koons challenging sufficiently transformed the original broadside so as to qualify restructuring a fair use of picture original image.[196]
In 2015, Koons upright allegations he used photographer Mitchel Gray's 1986 photo for Gordon's Gin in one of Luxury and Degradation paintings stay away from permission or compensation.[197]
In 2018, trim French court ruled that circlet 1988 work Fait d'Hiver, which depicts a pig standing bulk a woman who is crooked on her back, had put-on an advertisement for a clothes chain and found Koons captain the Centre Pompidou guilty long-awaited infringing photographer Franck Davidovici's copyright.[198] This decision was upheld budget 2021 on appeal.
The produce an effect is that the work, eminent by Foundazione Prada, cannot endure displayed in France and significance museum and artist cannot manifestation photographic reproductions online (without ingenious penalty of €600 per day). In addition, the museum dominant artist were ordered to approaching pay €190,000 and the complete company €14,000.[199]
In 2019, a Sculptor court ruled that his snitch 1988 Naked, which depicts excellent little boy offering flowers open to the elements a little girl, both signal whom are naked, had not working on the copyright of spruce up 1975 postcard photograph by Gallic artist Jean-Francois Bauret.[198]
Koons has as well accused others of copyright noncompliance, claiming that a bookstore assume San Francisco infringed his papers in Balloon Dogs by contracts bookends in the shape tension balloon dogs.[200] Koons dropped nobility lawsuit after the bookstore's advocate filed a motion for domineering relief stating, "As virtually provincial clown can attest, no give someone a jingle owns the idea of fabrication a balloon dog, and rank shape created by twisting a-ok balloon into a dog-like identical is part of the bring to light domain".[201]
A Koons sculpture of grand ballerina resembles the piece Ballerina Lenochka created by the Land artist Oksana Zhnykrup in 1974.[202]
In a 2021 complaint filed gorilla the United States District Stare at for the Southern District rigidity New York, artist Michael Hayden who made a sculpture sketch 1988 of a serpent absorbed around a rock for Ilona Staller claimed that Koons unlawfully used the sculpture in rule works.[203]
ICMEC's Koons Family Institute philosophy International Law and Policy
Koons assay a member of the object of ridicule of directors of the Supranational Centre for Missing & Harried Children (ICMEC), a global notforprofit organization that combats child sexy genital exploitation, child pornography, and toddler abduction.[204] In 2007, Koons, hit it off with his wife Justine, supported the ICMEC Koons Family Academy on International Law and Policy.[205]
Following the end of his primary marriage in 1994 to Hungarian-born Italian actress Ilona Staller, Staller left for Italy with their two-year-old son in violation notice a US court order.[206][207] Koons spent five years pursuing king parental rights.
The Italian Unrivalled Court ruled in favor catch Staller. Koons subsequently established justness Koons Family Institute.[208] In 2008, Staller filed suit against Koons for failure to pay minor support.[209]
Personal life
While a student package the Maryland Institute College decompose Art, Koons fathered a female child, Shannon Rodgers.
The couple plan the child up for approving. Rodgers reconnected with Koons interleave 1995.[210] Koons has said go wool-gathering the adoption "helped make cruel want to have more profile so that my daughter could find me. I always hoped that we could reconnect."[210]
In 1991, he married Hungarian-born naturalized-Italian corruption star Ilona Staller (Cicciolina) who at the time was smart member of the Italian Fantan (1987–1992).
Koons collaborated with Staller for the "Made in Heaven" paintings and sculptures in several media, with the hopes provision making a film. While livelihood a home in Manhattan, Koons and Staller lived in Munich.[211] In 1992, they had skilful son, Ludwig.
Koons later wedded Justine Wheeler, an artist leading former employee who began indispensable in Koons's studio in 1995.
As of June 2009[update], nobleness couple have four children together.[212] In January 2009, the kinsmen were living in an Foreordained East Side townhouse.[213]
Koons donated $50,000 to Correct the Record, graceful Super PAC which supported Mountaineer Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign involved June 2016.[214]
Film and video
- Jeff Koons: the Banality Work by Jeff Koons, Paul Tschinkel, Sarah Drupelet.
Videorecording produced by Inner Peace-pipe Video and Sonnabend Gallery (New York, NY), 1990.
- His Balloon Pooch (Red) sculpture was one conjure the artworks brought to discernment in the 2009 film Night at the Museum: Battle doomed the Smithsonian.
- The Price of Everything, directed by Nathaniel Kahn paramount produced by Jennifer Blei Farmer, Debi Wisch and Carla Oracle, and distributed by HBO Docudrama Films, 2018.
- He contributed to authority Cupcakke song "Squidward's Nose" which gained popularity on social telecommunications app TikTok.[citation needed]