Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons is a famous contemporary artist whose work is influenced by an eclectic array of sensibilities.
Born in York, Pennsylvania, on January 21, 1955, artist Jeff Koons made a name for himself by using everyday objects in special installations that touched on consumerism and the human experience. Some of his art has consisted of overtly sexual themes while others have been seen as a form of neo-kitsch, such as his balloon dogs. In 1988, he debuted a famous sculpture of Michael Jackson.
Jeff Koons’ first show was staged in 1980, and he emerged onto the art scene with a style that blended several existing styles—pop, conceptual, craft, appropriation—to create his own unique mode of expression. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance while others dismiss his work as kitsch, crass, and based on cynical self-merchandising.
As an “idea man,” Jeff Koons often using computer-aided design and hiring out the actual construction of his pieces to technicians who can bring to life his ideas with more precision than he himself could.
His work takes on, in usually unconventional ways, such hot-button subjects such as sex, race, gender and fame, and it comes to life in such forms as balloons, bronzed sporting-goods items and inflatable pool toys. His knack for elevating the stature of such items from kitsch objects to high art has made his name synonymous with the art of mass culture.
He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania. His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least two record auction prices for a work by a living artist, including $91.1 million with fees in May 2019, for his Rabbit, purchased by Robert E. Mnuchin according to a New York Times article.
On November 12, 2013,
Jeff Koons Balloon Dog (Orange) sold at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York City for US$58.4 million, above its high US$55 million estimate, becoming the most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction. The price topped Koons' previous record of US$33.7 million and the record for the most expensive living artist, held by Gerhard Richter, whose 1968 painting, Domplatz, Mailand, sold for US$37.1 million at Sotheby's on May 14, 2013. Balloon Dog (Orange) was one of the first of his Balloon Dog works to be fabricated, and had been acquired by Greenwich collector Peter Brant in the late 1990s. Each of Koons Balloon Dog measures 307.3 × 363.2 × 114.3 cm and is made of mirror-polished stainless steel and finished with a translucent coating of either blue, magenta, orange, red, or yellow.
