Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons (born January 21 1955) is an American artist whose work incorporates kitsch imagery using painting, sculpture, and other forms, often in large scale. His life and work were profiled on CBS Sunday Morning and 60 minutes.

Life and art

Early life and work

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania; as a teenager he revered Salvador Dalí, to the extent of visiting 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. After college, he worked as a Wall Street commodities broker while establishing himself as an artist. 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 to Andy Warhol's Factory and the studio of Damien Hirst.Koons's early work was in the form of conceptual sculpture, an example of which is "Three Ball 50/50 Tank" (1985), consisting of three basket balls floating in distilled water that half-fills a glass tank.

Koons carefully cultivated his public persona by employing an image consultant— something that at the time was unheard of for a contemporary artist. As an artwork in their own right, Koons placed full page advertisements in the main international art magazine featuring photographs by Matt Chedgey of himself surrounded by the trappings of success. During personal appearances and interviews, Koons began to refer to himself in the third person.

Koons then moved on to "Statuary", the large stainless-steel blowups of toys, followed by the "Banality" series that culminated in 1988 with "Michael Jackson and Bubbles"—said to be the world's largest ceramic—Fact|date=July 2008 a life-size gold-leaf plated statue of the sitting singer cuddling Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee. Three years later it sold at Sotheby's New York for $5.6 million and is now in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The statue was included in a retrospective survey at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo (2004) which traveled to the Helsinki City Art Museum (2005). It was also featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2008) in his second retrospective survey there.

In November (2007), Koons became the most expensive living artist when his giant stainless-steel "Hanging Heart" sold at Sotheby's New York for $23.6 million, only to be topped in July 2008 by his "Balloon Flower (Magenta)" selling for a record $25.7 million at Christie’s in London. Other large sculptures from his "Celebration" series were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (2008).

Marriage 1991

In 1991, he married Hungarian-born naturalized-Italian porn star Cicciolina (Ilona Staller) who for five years (1987–1992) pursued an alternate career as a member of the Italian parliament. His "Made in Heaven" [ [http://www.neurotypisch.nl/koons/madeinheaven.html Jeff Koons - Made in Heaven ] ] series of paintings, photos and sculptures portrayed the couple in explicit sexual positions and created even more controversy.

In 1992, they had a son Ludwig. The marriage ended soon after. They agreed joint custody but Staller absconded from New York to Rome with the child, where mother and son remain, despite the award in 1998 of sole custody to Koons by the US courts which had dissolved the marriage.

In 2008, Staller filed suit against Koons for failing to pay child support. [cite web|url= http://xbiz.com/news/91852|title= Cicciolina Sues Ex-Husband Koons for Child Support|accessdate= 2008-03-27|author= Tod Hunter|date= 2008-03-27|publisher= xbiz.com]

"Puppy" 1992

During this time, he was commissioned in 1992 to create a piece for an art exhibition in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The result was "Puppy", a forty-three foot (12.4 m) tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy executed in a variety of flowers on a 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.

The piece was purchased in 1997 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed on the terrace outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. Before the dedication at the museum, a trio disguised as gardeners attempted to plant explosive-filled flowerpots near the sculpture [http://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/news/robinson/robinson10-14-97.asp] but were foiled by Bilbao police. In the summer of 2000, the artwork travelled to New York City for a temporary exhibition at Rockefeller Center.

Media mogul Peter Brant and his wife, model Stephanie Seymour, have an exact Jeff Koons duplicate of the Bilbao statue on the grounds of their Connecticut estate.

Recent work

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

In 2001, he undertook a series of paintings titled, "Easyfun-Ethereal", using a collage approach that combined bikinis (with the bodies removed), food, and landscapes painted under his supervision by assistants.

In 2006, he appeared on Artstar, an unscripted television series set in the New York art world.

On November 14 2007, his sculpture "Hanging Heart" sold at Sotheby's auction house for $23.6 million becoming, at the time, the most expensive piece by a living artist ever auctioned. It was bought by the Gagosian Gallery which also purchased another Koons sculpture entitled "Diamond (Blue)" for $11.8 million from Christie's auction house on Tuesday, November 13, 2007. citation | title=Jeff Koons | author= Robert Ayers | publisher=ARTINFO | year=2008 | date= April 25, 2008 | url=http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/27454/jeff-koons/ | accessdate=2008-05-14 ]

He rendered a drawing similar to his "Tulip Balloons" for placement 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. [April 30 is Queen's Day in the Netherlands.]

A Koons sculpture resembling a balloon model sold recently for a record £12.9m at Christie's in London. Fact|date=July 2008

"Cracked Egg (blue)" won the 2008 Charles Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work in the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. [http://static.royalacademy.org.uk/secure/files/wollaston-award-announcement-295.pdf]

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." Fact|date=July 2008 Koon's 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. Fact|date=July 2008

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:

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

Evaluation and Influence

Koons has received extreme reactions to his work. Supporters claim (for "Balloon Dog") "an awesome presence... a massive durable monument"(Amy Dempsey, ed. "Styles, Schools and Movements", 2002, Thames & Hudson), and for other work that it is possible to be "wowed by the technical virtuosity and eye-popping visual blast" (Jerry Saltz, art critic) [ [http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/saltz/saltz12-16-03.asp artnet.com Magazine Features - Breathing Lessons ] ]

However, 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." 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' work "artificial," "cheap" and "unabashedly cynical."

Koons has received recognition by his peers. In 2005 he was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has had an influence on younger artists such as Damien HirstFact|date=July 2008 (e.g. in Hirst's "Hymn", an eighteen-foot version of a fourteen-inch anatomical toy), and Mona HatoumFact|date=July 2008. In turn, his extreme enlargement of mundane objects owes a debt to Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van BruggenFact|date=July 2008. Much of his work was also influenced by artists working in Chicago during his study at the Art Institute, including Jim Nutt, Ed Paschke and H. C. Westermann, among others. [citation title=Everything's Here: Jeff Koons and his experience of Chicago | author=MCA Chicago | url=http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/exh_detail.php?id=200 | accessdate=2008-08-06]

Copyright litigation

Koons has been sued several times for copyright infringement over his use of pre-existing images 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" [http://jerryandmartha.com/yourdailyart/images/koons2.jpg] .

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 a lawsuit in "Blanch v. Koons", No. 03 Civ. 8026 (LLS), S.D.N.Y., Nov. 1 2005 (slip op.), [http://www.cll.com/articles/article.cfm?articleid=239#1] , 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.

Philanthropy

Koons donated a private tour of his studio to the Hereditary Disease Foundation for auction on charitybuzz.com. The auction ran from February 15 to March 6, 2008.

Controversy in Versailles

"Jeff Koons Versailles", an exhibition of 17 Koons sculptures at the Chateau de Versailles (September 10 - December 14, 2008), marked the first time that the chateau has organized an ambitious display of an American contemporary artist, and is also considered Mr. Koons' first retrospective in France. The National Union of Writers of France, a right-wing group dedicated to French artistic purity, has been organizing protests at the palace gates, demanding the cancellation of an exhibition that they describe as "a truly sullying of the most sacred aspects of our heritage and identity." Arnaud-Aaron Upinsky, the group's chairman, added that the display "strikes at the heart of a civilization" and "is an outrage to Marie Antoinette [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/arts/design/11koon.html?scp=2&sq=versailles&st=cse] ."

Notes and references

Further reading

* "The Jeff Koons Handbook" (1993) by Jeff Koons ("the first monograph and primary sourcebook"), ISBN 0-8478-1696-6.
* Michael Kimmelman. "Jeff Koons." "The New York Times". November 29, 1991.
*Mark Stevens. "Adventures in the Skin Trade." "The New Republic". January 20, 1992.
*Judd Tully. "Jeff Koons's Raw Talent: In New York, an X-rated Exhibition." "The Washington Post". December 15, 1991.
*Calvin Tomkins, [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/23/070423fa_fact_tomkins "The Turnaround Artist: Jeff Koons up from banality"] , The New Yorker magazine, April 23, 2007
*ELAINE SCIOLINO, [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/arts/design/11koon.html?scp=2&sq=versailles&st=cse "At the Court of the Sun King, Some All-American Art"] ,The New York Times, September 11, 2008

Film and video

*”Jeff Koons, the Banality Work” by Jeff Koons; Paul Tschinkel; Sarah Berry; Inner Tube Video; Sonnabend Gallery (New York, NY). Videorecording. NY: Inner-Tube Video, 1990.

External links

* [http://www.jeffkoons.com/index_flash.html jeffkoons.com]
* [http://www.denoirmont.com/artiste.php?id=23 French gallery of the artist]
* [http://www.myspace.com/jeff_koons Slideshow of his monumental works and video interview filmed at the Jeff Koons studio]
* [http://www.artnet.com/ag/fineartthumbnails.asp?aid=9741 Examples of work and literature]
* [http://www.jca-online.com/koons.html Jeff Koons interviewed] by Klaus Ottmann
* [http://islandwoo.com/2008/06/22/metropolitan-museum-jeff-koons-on-the-roof-garden/ Jeff Koons on the Rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art]
* [http://www.neurotypisch.nl/koons/index.html Jeff Koons - A Collection of Images]
* [http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/2297/lang/1 Actual Exhibitions from Jeff Koons]
* [http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2005/07/monday_musing_d.html Defending Jeff Koons] Short essay by Morgan Meis of [http://3quarksdaily.com "3 Quarks Daily"]
* [http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/saltz/saltz12-16-03.asp Jerry Saltz reviews Jeff Koons, "Popeye," show 2003, Sonnabend Gallery, New York]
* [http://www.gagosian.com/artists/jeff-koons/ Jeff Koons at Gagosian Gallery]
* [http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/04/23/slideshow_070423_koons Slideshow of his works in The New Yorker]
* [http://www.wtc.com/media/videos/Jeff%20Koons Jeff Koons Interview about "Balloon Flower"] (video)
* [http://www.wtc.com/media/images/s/balloon-flower Photos of "Balloon Flower"] (photos)
* [http://yachts.monacoeye.com/pages/guilty_001.html Photos of June 2008 Jeff Koons designed yacht "Guilty"]
* [http://supervert.com/essays/art/jeff_koons Frankenstein in Paradise] Analysis of Koon's "Celebration" paintings
* [http://www.neurotypisch.nl/koons/madeinheaven.html The Made In Heaven series (Caution: x-rated)]
* [http://vernissage.tv/blog/2008/09/16/jeff-koons-versailles/ Interview Jeff Koons Versailles] Video at VernissageTV.