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Oxford Grove Art:

Jeff Koons

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(b York, PA, 21 Jan 1955). American artist. He trained at Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (BA 1976), and worked as a Wall Street commodities broker before embarking upon his career as an artist. In the 1980s he won international recognition as a radical exponent of Neo-Geo, an American movement concerned with appropriation and parody. Following the example of Pop artists of the 1960s, Koons used his work to reflect the commercial systems of the modern world. He also referred back to the Duchampian tradition, appropriating an art status to selected products. His vacuum cleaners encased in perspex (1980-81; see 1993 exh. cat., pls 5-9) were classified as monuments to sterility. His immaculate replicas of domestic products, advertisements, kitsch toys and models exercised an enthusiastic endorsement of unlimited consumption, unlike the veiled criticism of some work of the first generation of Pop artists. Koons perceived Western civilization as a driven society, flattered by narcissistic images and with a voracious appetite for glamorous commodities. In his expressions of the ecstatic and the banal he did not hesitate to breach the borderlines of taste; in the body of work titled Made in Heaven (1989-91; see 1993 exh. cat., pls 48-65) he featured explicit sexual photographs and models of himself with his wife Ilona Staller ('La Cicciolina'). Such works were naturally highly controversial.

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Gale Encyclopedia of Biography:

Jeff Koons

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In the tradition of Marcel Duchamp, Dada, and Pop Art, American artist Jeff Koons (born 1955) created controversial works of art that forced the spectator to reexamine the impact of consumerism and popular culture on both the individual and contemporary society.

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955. Koons's father, a furniture store owner and interior designer, early on encouraged his son's interest in art. By the age of 18, Koons enrolled at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he was a student between 1972 and 1975. During his senior year, Koons decided to spend his time studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while simultaneously working at the Museum of Contemporary Art in the installations department. In 1976 he returned to the Maryland Institute to finish his course requirements for the Bachelor of Fine Arts before moving to New York in 1977. While in New York he found employment at the Museum of Modern Art working in the museum's membership department while at the same time pursuing his artistic endeavors.

Transforms Everyday Objects

Perhaps one of the most controversial artists of his generation, Koons provoked a wide array of critical responses that oscillated between those who saw him as a latter-day standard bearer of the Dada and Pop movements to those who viewed his art as the product of a shameless self-promoter and charlatan who relied upon kitsch and shock tactics to draw attention to himself. Koons's work appears to follow the traditions established by Marcel Duchamp in his use of the "ready-made" or "found" object, Jasper Johns and his characteristic material transformations of everyday consumer objects into works of art, and Robert Rauschenberg's appropriation of commercial imagery found in popular magazines and the news media. Most of Koons's art makes use of manufactured commercial products: some were bought directly from the store while others were "remanufactured" either by the artist himself or by hired artisans. Koons appropriated these objects and decontexualized them and, like Duchamp before him, raised the objects to the aesthetic and intellectual level. Thus he forces us to see these inanimate consumer objects as things that are capable not only of revealing something about ourselves and the culture in which we live but of illuminating questions surrounding the very meaning of life as well.

Among Koons's first important projects was a series of installations started in 1979 and continued throughout the 1980s that made use of ordinary, store-bought Hoover vacuum cleaners, shampoo machines, and polishers exhibited alone, in pairs, and/or in quadruplicate. All were encased in Plexiglas cases together with fluorescent tube lighting placed either beneath or behind the machines. Thus these appliances seem to be icons of popular and domestic culture and of the consumerism that characterizes the modern world, but they are also animated appliances that, isolated from their normal utilitarian contexts, take on a strangely human, physical presence as "breathing machines."

In 1985 Koons embarked on a series of works involving the use of inflatables such as a raft, an aqualung, and even common basketballs. Each of these works refer to the question of life and death but in ironic and sometimes chilling ways. For example, two of Koons's sculptures from 1985 entitled Boat, a simple life raft, and Aqualung, a diver's tank, are both devices intended to preserve and protect life from the potentially deadly perils of water, yet they are constructed of heavy bronze as if to deny the object's original function as lifesaver and instead offer a reminder of our mortality. His Equilibrium series, which defined his first one-man show, held at a small gallery in Manhattan in 1985, made use of ordinary basketballs (inflated) suspended in water-filled glass flotation tanks; behind these Koons displayed authentic posters depicting famous basketball players advertising sports equipment. These works have also been interpreted in the context of the life process - as the thematic coupling of air and water has been likened to "breath or amniotic fluid." The inclusion of the famous basketball players in the advertisement might be analogous to the artist's own quest to cheat death by achieving, like these athletes, immortality via everlasting fame and recognition as an artist. Such fame came to Koons in 1986 when his work was discovered by the art dealer Ileana Sonnabend, who helped Koons gain exposure on an international scale.

Self-Promotion of Art Criticized

Koons's elevation of kitsch and the appropriation of tacky images and objects culled from popular culture contributed to his unexpected and swift rise to the top of the art world. It also contributed to the often scathing critical responses that made Koons so controversial. Moreover, it is seemingly his unabashed, but highly successful, personal promotion skills - used to facilitate the proliferation of both his art and his reputation - that called into question his integrity as an artist. For example, in 1992 Koons took the unprecedented step of not only brashly mounting a retrospective for an artist so young, but of making his work in duplicate so he was able to stage retrospectives simultaneously in two different cities and to participate in more than 75 exhibitions in more than 15 countries between 1986 and 1993. For this reason many in the art world felt that Koons was nothing more than an exhibitionist and shock artist.

Despite Koons's denial that he intentionally sought to provoke or shock, both his life and work grew increasingly scandalous and publicized. In 1991 Koons made international headlines when he married "Cicciolina" (Ilona Staller), a former pornographic film star and member of the Italian parliament who was fond of shocking her legislative colleagues by periodically baring her breasts in public. Not surprisingly, she was to play an important role in the controversial works of art Koons created between 1990 and 1992, which made up a good portion of Koons's retrospectives. These works, done in a wide variety of media including sculpture, photography, and painting, depicted the married couple in various stages of sexual intimacy ranging from "soft" pornography to "hard-core" images of penetration often blown up to monumental proportions like the countless billboards that line the streets and highways of America. Critics deemed him the "princeling of kitsch" after his 1993 mixed-media sculptures and wall pieces debuted.

In 1992, however, Koons and Staller filed for divorce, and he remained in New York City. In 1995, an Italian judge acquitted the artist on charges that he had threatened his wife and abducted their son when he took the baby from Staller's Italian home in 1993 because the baby was a resident of New York. After a protracted legal battle, custody of their son, Ludwig Maximilian, was awarded to Staller.

Further Reading

American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America by Robert Hughes (1997) reviews Koons' work. More has been written about Jeff Koons than perhaps any other artist of his generation yet no major monograph on the artist had been published into the 1990s. The pages of journals, magazines, newspapers, and various museum catalogues are the primary sources for information on the artist. One particularly good catalogue is Michael Danhoff, Jeff Koons, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1988). An important article published by David Littlejohn in Art News was entitled "Who is Jeff Koons and Why Are People Saying Such Terrible Things about Him?" (April 1993).

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Jeff Koons

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Koons, Jeff, 1955-, American artist, b. York, Pa., studied Maryland Institute College of Art (B.F.A., 1976), Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to New York City in 1977 and has lived and worked there since. Koons has been damned and praised with equal fervor by critics, called shallow, cynical, and the bad boy of American art by some and post-ironic, awesome, and a post-pop superstar by others. His work may be characterized as an updated postmodern synthesis of surrealism, Dada, pop art and good old-fashioned American kitsch.

Inspired by Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades, Koons's early works consisted of actual toys and houshold appliances backed with mirrors and enclosed in plastic vitrines. He has often produced works in series, including "Statuary" (1986), stainless-steel versions of novelty-item sculptures; "Banality" (1988), sculptures resembling large-size dime-store gimcracks, notably a life-sized gold-plated porcelain figure of pop star Michael Jackson and his pet chimpanzee; "Made in Heaven" (1989-91), mainly sexually explicit paintings, sculpture, and photographs of himself and Italian porn star "La Cicciolina," whom he subsequently married and soon divorced; "Celebration" (1994-2006), large paintings and sculptures of toys, food, and other things that delight children, among them huge smooth-surfaced stainless-steel balloon animals in deeply saturated colors, e.g., his 14-ft-high (4-m) Rabbit (2003); and "Hulk Elvis" (2007), brilliantly colored, collagelike oil paintings, many featuring cartoon superheroes. One of his best-known sculptures, the monumental Puppy (1992), is a 43-ft-high (13-m) seated terrier pup blanketed with thousands of flowering plants.

Koons makes a point of avoiding all traces of the artist's hand. Much of his work is conceived on computer and executed by squads of craftsmen. Something in Koons's works, perhaps their appeal to mass culture or the ease with which they can be understood, has struck a chord with collectors, and his works have fetched multimillion-dollar prices in galleries and and set auction records. His stainless-steel Hanging Heart (1994-2006) was sold at auction in 2007 for $23.6 million.

Bibliography

See his Jeff Koons Handbook (1993); studies by T. Krens et al. (2000), T. Kellein, ed. (2003), S. Canarutto (2006), and I. Sischy et al. (2008).

Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Jeff Koons

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Jeff Koons

Koons at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival
Born (1955-01-25) January 25, 1955 (age 57)
York, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality American
Field Sculpture, printmaking, balloon modelling
Training School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore
Works Puppy (1992)
Balloon Dog (1994-2000)
Influenced by H.C. Westermann, Salvador Dalí

Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons (born January 21, 1955) is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces. He lives and works in New York City and his hometown York, Pennsylvania.

Koons' work has sold for substantial sums of money including at least one world record auction price for a work by a living artist. The largest sum known to be paid for a work by Koons is Balloon flower (Magenta) which was sold for £12,921,250 (US$25,765,204) at Christie's London on June 30, 2008 (Lot 00012) in the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale.

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 in his works,[1] nor any critiques.[2]

Contents

Early life and education

Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania. His father Henry Koons[3] was a furniture dealer and interior decorator; his mother Gloria, a housewife and seamstress.[4] As a child he went door to door after school selling gift-wrapping paper and candy to earn pocket-money.[5] As a teenager he revered Salvador Dalí, to the extent that he visited him at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. Koons studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art. While a visiting student at the Art Institute, Koons met the artist Ed Paschke, who became a major influence and for whom he worked as a studio assistant late 1970s.[6] After college, he worked at the membership desk of the Museum of Modern Art[7] and as a Wall Street commodities broker while establishing himself as an artist.

Personal life

While a student at the Maryland College of Art, Koons conceived a daughter, Shannon Rodgers. Though he offered to marry the girl's mother, she felt that they were too young for the commitment, and the couple reluctantly put the child up for adoption. Shannon Rodgers reconnected with Koons in 1995.[8]

In 1991, he married Hungarian-born naturalized-Italian pornography star Cicciolina (Ilona Staller) who for five years (1987–1992) pursued an alternate career as a member of the Italian parliament. In 1992, they had a son, Ludwig. The marriage ended soon afterward. They agreed to joint custody of the child, but Staller absconded from New York to Rome with the child, where mother and son remain. A long custody battle ensued with the award of sole custody to Koons by the U.S. court in 1998, which had also dissolved the marriage. However, he ended up losing custody when the case went to Italy's Supreme Court.[9]

In 2008, Staller filed suit against Koons for failing to pay child support.[10]

Koons is now married to Justine Wheeler, an artist and former employee who began working for Koons' studio in 1995.[11]

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.[12] He gained recognition in the 1980s and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a SoHo loft on the corner of Houston 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 (notable because all of his work is produced using a method known as Art fabrication).[13] Today, he has a 1,500 m2 (16,000 sq ft) factory in Chelsea with 90 regular assistants.[4] Koons developed 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".[3]

The Pre-New, The New, and Equilibrium series

Since 1979 Koons has produced work within series.[14] 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 which appealed to the artist and 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 orientated 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.[15] Another example for Koon's early work is The Equilibrium Series (1985), 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.[3] The Total Equilibrium Tanks are completely filled with distilled water and a small amount of sodium chloride reagent, 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.[16]

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 sculptur 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 13, 2009, the giant metallic monochrome color rabbit used during the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade was put on display for Nuit Blanche in the Eaton Centre in Toronto.

Luxury and Degradation series

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"), Martell ("I Assume You Drink Martell") and Frangelico ("Stay in Tonight" and "Find a Quiet Table")[17] in seductively intensified colors on canvas[4] 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.[18] The train model cast in steel titled Jim Beam - Baggage Car (1986) even contains Jim Beam bourbon.

Made in Heaven series

In 1989 the Whitney Museum asked Koons to make an artwork about the media on a billboard[3] for the show "Image World: Art and Media Culture". Koons employed Ilona Staller as a model in the shoot that formed the basis of the resulting work for the Whitney, Made in Heaven (1990–91).[19] The series of paintings, photographs, and sculptures portrayed the Koons and Staller in explicit sexual positions and created considerable controversy. It was first shown at the 1990 Venice Biennale.[20] Koons reportedly destroyed much of the work when Staller took their son Ludwig with her to Italy.[21] In celebration of the Made in Heaven's 20th anniversary, Luxembourg & Dayan chose to present a redux edition of the series.[22]

Banality series

Main article Banality sculptures

Koons then moved on to the Banality series that 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 $5.6 million. Two of these sculptures are now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 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.

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,[23] allowing for simultaneous, identical shows at galleries in New York, Cologne, and Chicago, Koons devised the Art Magazine Ads series (1988-89).[24] Placed in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, and Art News, the ads were designed as promotions for his own gallery exhibitions.[25] 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.”[13]

Puppy

Puppy in Bilbao
Tulips in Bilbao

Koons was not among the 44 American artists selected to exhibit his work in Documenta 9 in 1992,[26] but was commissioned by three art dealers to create a piece for nearby Arolsen Castle in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The result was Puppy, a 43 ft (13 m) tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy, executed in a variety of flowers (including Marigolds, Begonias, Impatiens, Petunias, and Lobelias)[27] on a transparent colour-coated chrome stainless steel substructure. In 1995, 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.[28]

The piece was purchased in 1997 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed on the terrace outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.[29] Before the dedication at the museum, an Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) trio disguised as gardeners attempted to plant explosive-filled flowerpots near the sculpture,[30] but was foiled by Basque police officer Jose María Aguirre, who then was shot dead by ETA members.[31][32] 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.[33]

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.[34] In 1998, a miniature version of Puppy was released as a white glazed porcelain vase, in an edition of 3000.[35]

Celebration series

Celebration, a series of large-scale sculptures and paintings of, among others 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”,[36] including the artist's proof, all in high-chromium stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces. Koons began the series with Balloon Dog in 1994, based on balloons twisted into the shape of a toy dog[37] and coated with transparent color in Blue, Magenta, Yellow, Orange, and Red. He later made ten monumental Easter Eggs with ribbon, each one uniquely colored, between 1994 and 2008; five have a smooth surface (Smooth Egg with Bow, 1994–2009) and the other eggs seem to be packed in crumpled foil (Baroque Egg with Bow, 1994–2008).[38] The two-part Cracked Egg sculptures (1994-2006) are the only works in the series in which fracture or assault of the shiny surface has taken place.[39] Cracked Egg (Blue) won the 2008 Charles Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work in the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition.[40] His later work Tulips (1995–2004) consists of a bouquet of multicolor balloon flowers blown up to gargantuan proportions (more than 2 m (6.6 ft) tall and 5 m (16 ft) across).[41]

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.[42] 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. The dealers funded the project in part by selling works to collectors before they were fabricated.[43]

In 2006, Koons presented Hanging Heart, a 9 feet tall highly polished, steel heart, one of a series of five differently colored examples, part of his Celebration series.[44] Large sculptures from that series were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2008.

The series also includes, in addition to sculptures, sixteen[45] oil paintings.[38]

Recent work

Commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim in 1999, Koons began a new series, Easyfun, comprising paintings and wall-mounted sculptures. One year later, he 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. 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.[46] Paintings and sculptures from his Popeye series, which he began in 2002, feature the cartoon figures of Popeye and Olive Oyl.[47]

Other

In 1999, Koons commissioned a song about himself on Momus's album Stars Forever.

In 2006, he appeared on Artstar, an unscripted television series set in the New York art world and from February 15 to March 6, 2008, he donated a private tour of his studio to the Hereditary Disease Foundation for auction on Charitybuzz.com.

Kiepenkerl, located in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.

A drawing similar to his Tulip Balloons was placed on the front page of the Internet search engine Google. The drawing greeted all who visited Google's main page on April 30, 2008 and May 1, 2008.[48]

Koons had a minor role in the 2008 film Milk playing state assemblyman Art Agnos.[49]

Curating

Koons acted as curator of an Ed Paschke exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, New York, in 2009.[50] In 2010 he curated an exhibition of works from the private collection of Greek billionaire Dakis Joannou at the New Museum in New York City. The exhibition, Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection, generated debate concerning cronyism within the art world. Koons is heavily collected by Joannou and had previously designed the exterior of Joannou's yacht Guilty.[citation needed]

BMW Art Car

The Koons-designed car — driven by Dirk Müller, Andy Priaulx and Dirk Werner — was retired after 53 laps of the race.

Jeff Koons was the artist named to design the seventeenth in the series of BMW "Art Cars". His artwork was applied to a race-spec E92 BMW M3, and revealed to the public at The Pompidou Centre in Paris on 2 June 2010.[51] Backed by BMW Motorsport, the car then competed at the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans in France.[52]

Exhibitions

Since a 1980 window installation at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Koons' work has been widely exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. In 1986, he appeared in a group show with Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, and Meyer Vaisman at Sonnabend Gallery in New York. In 1997, the Galerie Jerome de Noirmont organised his first solo show in Europe. His Made in Heaven series was first shown at the Venice Biennale in 1990.[20]

His museum solo shows include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1988), Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (1993), Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin (2000), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2001), the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (2003), and a retrospective survey at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2004), which traveled to the Helsinki City Art Museum (2005). In 2008, the Celebration series was shown at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[53]

Considered as his first retrospective in France, the 2008 exhibition of 17 Koons sculptures at the Chateau de Versailles also marked the first ambitious display of a contemporary American artist organized by the chateau. The New York Times reported that “several dozen people demonstrated outside the palace gates” in a protest arranged by a little-known, right-wing group dedicated to French artistic purity. It was also criticised that ninety percent of the $2.8 million in financing for the exhibition came from private patrons, mainly François Pinault.[54]

The May 31 – September 21, 2008 Koons retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago,[55][4][56] which was widely publicized in the press, broke the museum's attendance record with 86,584 visitors.[57][58] The exhibition included numerous works from the MCA collection, along with recent paintings and sculptures by the artist. The retrospective exhibition reflects the MCA's commitment to Koons's work as it presented the artist's first American survey in 1988.[59] For the final exhibition in its Marcel Breuer building, the Whitney Museum is planning to present a Koons retrospective in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.[60]

In July 2009, Koons had his first major solo show in London, at the Serpentine Gallery. Entitled Jeff Koons: Popeye Series, the exhibit included cast aluminum models of children’s pool toys and "dense, realist paintings of Popeye holding his can of spinach or smoking his pipe, a red lobster looming over his head." [61]

In May 2012, Koons had his first major solo show in Switzerland, at the Beyeler Museum in Basel, entitled Jeff Koons. Shown are works from three series: The New,Banality and Celebration as well as the flowered sculpture Split-Rocker. [62]

Recognition

Koons received the BZ Cultural Award from the City of Berlin in 2000 and the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 2001. He was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor in 2002 and then promoted to Officier in 2007. He was given the 2008 Wollaston Award from the Royal Academy of Arts in London.[20]

Art market

Koons's works have sold for astronomical prices at auctions and privately. His auction records have primarily been achieved by his sculptures (especially those from his Celebration series), whereas his paintings are less popular. In 2001, one of his three Michael Jackson and Bubbles porcelain sculptures sold for $5.6 million. On November 14, 2007, a magenta Hanging Heart from the colletion of Adam Lindemann, one of five in different colors, sold at Sotheby's New York for $23.6 million becoming, at the time, the most expensive piece by a living artist ever auctioned.[44] It was bought by the Gagosian Gallery in New York, which the previous day had purchased another Koons sculpture, "Diamond (Blue)", for $11.8 million from Christie's London.[63] Gagosian appears to have bought both Celebration series works on behalf of Ukrainian steel oligarch Victor Pinchuk.[64] In July 2008, his 11-foot (3.3 meter) Balloon Flower (Magenta) (1995-2000) from the collection of Howard and Cindy Rachofsky also sold at Christie's London for an auction record of $25.7 million. In total, Koons was the top-selling artist at auction with €81.3 million ($117.2 million) of sales in the year to June 2008.[65]

During the late 2000s recession, however, art prices plummeted and auction sales of high-value works by Koons dropped 50 percent in 2009.[65] A violet Hanging Heart sold for $11 million in a private sale.[66] However prices for the artist's earlier Luxury and Degradation series appear to be holding up. The Economist reported that Thomas H. Lee, a private-equity investor, sold Jim Beam J.B. Turner Train (1986) in a package deal brokered by Giraud Pissarro Segalot for more than $15 million.[67]

Koons has been represented by dealers such as Mary Boone (1979-1980), Sonnabend Gallery (since 1986), Max Hetzler in Berlin and Jérôme de Noirmont in Paris. The exclusive right to the primary sale of the “Celebration” series is held by Gagosian Gallery, his dominant dealer. The artist is widely collected in America and Europe, where some collectors acquire his work in depth. Eli Broad has 24 pieces, and Dakis Joannou owns some 38 works from all stages of the artist’s career.[68]

Classification

Among curators and art collectors and others in the art world, Koons's work is labeled as Neo-pop or Post-Pop as part of an '80s movement in reaction to the pared-down art of Minimalism and Conceptualism in the previous decade. Koons resists such comments: "A viewer might at first see irony in my work... but I see none at all. Irony causes too much critical contemplation."[citation needed] Koons' crucial point is to reject any hidden meaning in his artwork. The meaning is only what one perceives at first glance; there is no gap between what the work is in itself and what is perceived.[citation needed]

He has caused controversy by the elevation of unashamed kitsch into the high art arena, exploiting more throwaway subjects than, for example, Warhol's soup cans. His work Balloon Dog (1994–2000) is based on balloons twisted into shape to make a toy dog.

His sculpture differs in two major respects to the original:

  1. it is made of metal (painted bright red to give the appearance of balloons),
  2. it is more than ten feet (three metres) tall.

Evaluation and influence

Koons has received extreme reactions to his work. Critic Amy Dempsey described his Balloon Dog as "an awesome presence... a massive durable monument."[69] Jerry Saltz at artnet.com enthused that it was possible to be "wowed by the technical virtuosity and eye-popping visual blast" of Koons's art.[70]

Mark Stevens of The New Republic dismissed him as a "decadent artist [who] lacks the imaginative will to do more than trivialize and italicise his themes and the tradition in which he works... He is another of those who serve the tacky rich."[71] Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times saw "one last, pathetic gasp of the sort of self-promoting hype and sensationalism that characterized the worst of the 1980s" and called Koons's work "artificial," "cheap" and "unabashedly cynical."[72]

In an article comparing the contemporary art scene with show business, renowned critic Robert Hughes wrote that Koons is “an extreme and self-satisfied manifestation of the sanctimony that attaches to big bucks. Koons really does think he's Michelangelo and is not shy to say so. The significant thing is that there are collectors, especially in America, who believe it. He has the slimy assurance, the gross patter about transcendence through art, of a blow-dried Baptist selling swamp acres in Florida. And the result is that you can't imagine America's singularly depraved culture without him.”[73] Hughes placed Koons's work just above that of Seward Johnson and was quoted in a New York Times article as having stated that comparing their careers was "like debating the merits of dog excrement versus cat excrement".[74]

To the question “Is it important that your work be famous?”, Koons replied: "There’s a difference between being famous and being significant. I’m interested in [my work's] significance — anything that can enrich our lives and make them vaster — but I’m really not interested in the idea of fame for fame’s sake."[63]

He has influenced younger artists such as Damien Hirst[13] (for example, in Hirst's Hymn, an 18 ft (5.5 m) version of a 14 in (0.36 m) anatomical toy) and Mona Hatoum.[citation needed] In turn, his extreme enlargement of mundane objects owes a debt to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen.[citation needed] Much of his work also was influenced by artists working in Chicago during his study at the Art Institute, including Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke, and H. C. Westermann.[75]

In 2005, he was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Copyright infringement litigation

Koons has been sued several times for copyright infringement over his use of pre-existing images, the original works of others, in his work. In Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301 (2d Cir. 1992), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a judgment against him for his use of a photograph of puppies as the basis for a sculpture, String of Puppies.[76]

Koons also lost lawsuits in United Features Syndicate, Inc. 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. Apr. 1, 1993).

More recently, he won one lawsuit, Blanch v. Koons, No. 03 Civ. 8026 (LLS), S.D.N.Y., Nov. 1 2005 (slip op.),[77] affirmed by the Second Circuit in October, 2006, brought over his use of a photographic advertisement as source material for legs and feet in a painting, Niagara (2000). The court ruled that Koons had sufficiently transformed the original advertisement so as to qualify as a fair use of the original image.

Koons has also threatened others under copyright, claiming that a gallery infringed his proprietary rights by selling bookends in the shape of balloon dogs.[78] Koons abandoned that claim after the gallery filed a complaint for declaratory relief stating, "As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain." [79]

Sources

References

  1. ^ Galenson, David. "You Cannot be Serious: the conceptual innovator as trickster", National Bureau of Economic Research, 2006, p. 25, citing Koons, The Jeff Koons Handbook.
  2. ^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jl_a5UQjUc
  3. ^ a b c d Wood, Gaby (June 3, 2007), "The wizard of odd", The Guardian.
  4. ^ a b c d Schjeldahl, Peter. "Funhouse - A Jeff Koons retrospective", The New Yorker, 9 June 2008.
  5. ^ Gayford, Martin. "Selling Candy to the Masses: Koons talks about sex, pleasure and future works", Apollo, 2008-03-01. Retrieved on 2009-06-09.
  6. ^ Randy Kennedy (February 24, 2010), The Koons Collection New York Times.
  7. ^ Jeff Koons, New Shelton Wet/Dry Doubledecker (1981) MoMA, New York.
  8. ^ Anthony, Andrew. "The Jeff Koons Show". The Guardian (UK). http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/oct/16/jeff-koons-art-custody-son. Retrieved 5/6/2012. 
  9. ^ cityfile.com (2009-11-25). "Jeff Koons". cityfile.com. http://cityfile.com/profiles/jeff-koons. Retrieved 2009-11-25. 
  10. ^ Tod Hunter (2008-03-27). "Cicciolina Sues Ex-Husband Koons for Child Support". xbiz.com. http://xbiz.com/news/91852. Retrieved 2008-03-27. 
  11. ^ Tim Teeman (2009-06-13). "Cicciolina Sues Ex-From Popeye to puppies: Jeff Koons explains his love of outrageous art". London: Times Online. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6485414.ece. Retrieved 2009-11-25. 
  12. ^ Jeff Koons, Tulips (1995-2004) Guggenheim Bilbao.
  13. ^ a b c Akbar, Arifa. "Koons Most Expensive Living Artist at Auction", The Independent (London), 7 November 2007.
  14. ^ ARTIST ROOMS Jeff Koons, March 19 − July 3, 2011 National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburg.
  15. ^ Jeff Koons, New Hoover Convertibles, New Shelton Wet/Drys 5-Gallon, Double Decker (1986) Christie's Post War And Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 13 May 2008.
  16. ^ Jeff Koons, Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Two Dr J Silver Series, Spalding NBA Tip-Off) (1985) Tate Collection.
  17. ^ Jeff Koons, Jim Beam-Box Car (1986) Christie's Post War And Contemporary Art Evening Sale, 13 May 2008.
  18. ^ Jeff Koons, Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Engine (1986) Christie's Post War and Contemporary Evening Sale, 13 May 2009.
  19. ^ Anthony, Andrew (October 16, 2011), "The Jeff Koons show", The Guardian.
  20. ^ a b c Jeff Koons, Guggenheim Collection.
  21. ^ Rachel Wolff (October 1, 2010), A Townhouse Full of High-Art Smut New York Magazine.
  22. ^ Morgan, Robert C. (January 2011). "Tumescent Follies, Inflated Money, and Kitschy Sex". The Brooklyn Rail. http://brooklynrail.org/2010/12/artseen/tumescent-follies-inflated-money-and-kitschy-sex. 
  23. ^ Brenson, Michael (December 18, 1988), Plus Glitz, With a Dollop of Innocence, The New York Times.
  24. ^ Jeff Koons, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo.
  25. ^ Jeff Koons, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
  26. ^ Smith, Roberta (July 5, 1992) How Much Is That Doggy in the Courtyard?, New York Times.
  27. ^ Jeff Koons: Puppy, June 6 - September 5, 2000 Public Art Fund.
  28. ^ Jeff Koons: Puppy, 12 December 1995 – 17 March, 1996 Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
  29. ^ Gil, Lorena. "En el corazón de Puppy", El Correo.
  30. ^ Robinson, Walter. "Terror attack at gugg bilbao", Artnet, 14 October 1997.
  31. ^ http://www.elmundo.es/1997/10/14/espana/14N0020.html
  32. ^ Munoz, Juan Miguel. "Un sindicato policial dice que personas con antecedentes trabajaban en el Guggenheim", El Pais, 21 October 1997.
  33. ^ Jeff Koons: Puppy, June 6 - September 5, 2000 Public Art Fund.
  34. ^ Kaufman, Jason Edward. "Peter Brant and Stephanie Seymour put their contemporary art collection on show", The Art Newspaper, 8 April 2009.
  35. ^ Jeff Koons, Puppy (vase) (1998), Sale 3019, The Jan & Monique des Bouvrie Collection, Amsterdam, 6 September 2011.
  36. ^ Thornton, Sarah (November 26, 2009), Inflatable investments - The volatile art of Jeff Koons The Economist.
  37. ^ Jeff Koons: Cracked Egg (Blue), October 2 - December 22, 2006 Gagosian Gallery, London.
  38. ^ a b Jeff Koons’s giant Easter Egg with bow in Boijmans, 22 February 2012 - 2015 Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
  39. ^ Burn, Gordon (November 11, 2006) "The showman", The Guardian.
  40. ^ Wollaston Award Announcement
  41. ^ Jeff Koons, Tulips (1995-2004), Guggenheim Bilbao.
  42. ^ Finkel, Jori (April 27, 2008), "At the Ready When Artists Think Big", The New York Times.
  43. ^ Thomas, Kelly Devine (May 1, 2005), "The Selling of Jeff Koons", Art News.
  44. ^ a b "Jeff Koon's Hanging Heart Sets Record At Auction", Culturekiosque, 15 November 2007.
  45. ^ Jeff Koons: Cracked Egg (Blue), October 2 - December 22, 2006 Gagosian Gallery, London.
  46. ^ Jeff Koons, May 13 – September 29, 2012 Fondation Beyeler, Basel.
  47. ^ Jeff Koons: Popeye Series, 2 July – 13 September 2009 Serpentine Gallery, London.
  48. ^ April 30 is Queen's Day in the Netherlands.
  49. ^ Delahoyde, Steve. "Jeff Koons Makes a Surprising Turn as an Actor in Milk", Media Bistro, 8 December 2008.
  50. ^ Ed Paschke - Curated by: Jeff Koons, March 18 - April 24, 2010, Gagosian Gallery, New York.
  51. ^ BMW Art Car by Jeff Koons to race at Le Mans 24 hour, AUSmotive.com, 7 June 2010.
  52. ^ BMW picks Jeff Koons as artist for next Art Car
  53. ^ Jeff Koons on the Roof Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.
  54. ^ Sciolino, Elaine. "At the Court of the Sun King, Some All-American Art", The New York Times, 10 September 2008.
  55. ^ Freudenheim, Tom L. (30 August 2008). "A Tarnished Jeff Koons". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122003984801984161.html. Retrieved 2009-09-16. 
  56. ^ Hester, Jessica (2008-06-03). "Kitsch master Koons unveils MCA retrospective". The Chicago Maroon. http://www.chicagomaroon.com/2008/6/3/kitsch-master-koons-unveils-mca-retrospective. Retrieved 2009-09-16. 
  57. ^ Conrad, Marissa (December 2008). "The Innovator". Chicago Social (Chicago): 140. 
  58. ^ "Jeff Koons". Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=178. Retrieved 2009-01-13. 
  59. ^ "Jeff Koons at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago". Artdaily. 2008. http://www.artdaily.com/section/news/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=23538&int_modo=1. Retrieved 2011-06-13. 
  60. ^ Vogel, Carol. Before Whitney’s Move, a Koons Retrospective, The New York Times, May 10, 2012.
  61. ^ Vogel, Carol. "Koons and a Sailor Man in London", The New York Times, 2 July 2009.
  62. ^ [1], 'Vernissage TV, May 2012.
  63. ^ a b Ayers, Robert (25 April 2008). Jeff Koons. ARTINFO. http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/27454/jeff-koons/. Retrieved 2008-05-14. 
  64. ^ Thornton, Sarah. "Recipe for a Record Price", The Art Newspaper, No. 191, 1 May 2008.
  65. ^ a b Reyburn, Scott (December 29, 2009), "Koons, Hirst Prices Drop 50%; May Take Next Decade to Recover", Bloomberg.
  66. ^ Vogel, Carol. "More Artworks Sell in Private in Slowdown", The New York Times, 26 April 2009.
  67. ^ "Crossing to safety: New York's uneven contemporary art sales", The Economist, 16 May 2009.
  68. ^ "Inflatable investments - The volatile art of Jeff Koons". The Economist, 26 November 2009.
  69. ^ Dempsey, Amy (ed.). Styles, Schools and Movements, Thames & Hudson, 2002.
  70. ^ Saltz, Jerry. "Breathing Lessons", artnet.com, 16 December 2003.
  71. ^ Stevens, Mark. "Adventures in the Skin Trade", The New Republic, 20 January 1992.
  72. ^ Kimmelman, Michael. "Jeff Koons", The New York Times, 29 November 1991.
  73. ^ Hughes, Robert. "Showbiz and the Art World", The Guardian, 30 June 2004.
  74. ^ Wadler, Joyce. "At Home with Robert Hughes: After Calamity, a Critic's Soft Landing", The New York Times, 12 October 2006.
  75. ^ "Everything's Here: Jeff Koons and His Experience of Chicago". MCA Chicago. http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=200. Retrieved 2008-08-06. 
  76. ^ http://jerryandmartha.com/yourdailyart/images/koons2.jpg
  77. ^ http://www.cll.com/articles/article.cfm?articleid=239#1
  78. ^ Whiting, Sam (February 4, 2011). "Jeff Koons' balloon-dog claim ends with a whimper". The San Francisco Chronicle. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/04/DDRN1HIDPL.DTL. 
  79. ^ http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/36786/6-hilarious-zingers-from-the-balloon-dog-freedom-suit-filed-against-jeff-koons/

Film and video

  • Jeff Koons: the Banality Work by Jeff Koons, Paul Tschinkel, Sarah Berry. Videorecording produced by Inner Tube Video and Sonnabend Gallery (New York, NY), 1990.
  • His Balloon Dog (Red) sculpture was one of the artworks brought to life in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jeff Koons
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jeff Koons

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