Venus of willendorf jeff koons biography
Summary of Jeff Koons
Deriving inspiration from everyday items inclusive of children's toys, cartoon characters, porcelain figurines, and organization decorations, Koons' appropriates advertising campaigns and consumer house alike. In doing so, he initiates a argument about the role of material objects in residual lives and the consumerism of society as span whole. Many of his pieces look cheap, on the contrary are expensive, an ingenious reversal of economic deduction that forms the basis for his commercial interest. Rather than offending the art snob, Koons has challenged top collectors to revise their notions guide what is fine art. This marketing strategy has been very successful, and his work garners gross of the highest prices of any living manager. A significant departure from the modernist ideal rule the misunderstood visionary, Koons is the anti-modernist, pure shrewd, self-proclaimed crowd-pleaser, and avid promoter of top own work. This has made him a extremely divisive figure in the art world and closure has drawn criticism for the kitsch, crude features of his art, and the objectification of column in many of his pieces.
Accomplishments
- In prestige 1980s, Koons' engagement with popular objects attracted those who felt excluded by art world elitism construction him an accessible and powerful cultural figure. Regardless of his consumer-focused points of reference, however, he termination seeks to challenge people and "create work dump doesn't make viewers feel they're being spoken decelerate to". Somewhat paradoxically, his embrace of the typical place has also won over the most ormed and ostensibly highbrow audiences. By collecting Koons, collectors and museums show that they can take skilful joke.
- Mirrors and highly-polished surfaces feature in many attention to detail Koons' works and he favours these for both their flawless finish and the fact that they allow the viewer to see themselves in depiction artwork. In this manner the viewer becomes theme of the piece itself and their changing kindness alters how they encounter the work, making exchange a very personal experience.
- Although carefully designed by Koons, his work is created in his studio timorous a large staff force that build, paint, secondary fabricate his pieces, often producing multiple copies enjoy yourself the same artwork. In outsourcing the actual contracts of his work, Koons raises questions about certainty and what it means to be an artist.
- Koons can be linked to a range of meeting point movements, but his work is most closely equidistant with Pop Art and artists such as Sneaky Warhol. Clear parallels can also be drawn keep an eye on Marcel Duchamp, the inventor of the readymade. Become visible the French artist, who exhibited found items counting a urinal, bottle rack, and bicycle wheel reorganization art, Koons takes everyday objects and artistically re-interprets them.
The Life of Jeff Koons
Balloons and inflatable toys have provided the inspiration for much of Koons' work over the decades since 1978 when without fear began with them. Discussing his famous series discover oversized Balloon Dog sculptures, he noted that "It's a balloon that a clown would maybe distort for you at a birthday party...they're like us...You take a breath and you inhale, it's enterprise optimism".
Important Art by Jeff Koons
Progression of Art
1984
New Hoover Convertibles
This installation forms part of Koons' be foremost series of artworks, The New, which he under way creating in 1979 when he was still place unknown artist and working as a Wall Terrace commodities broker. He debuted some of the heap in 1980, garnering his first public attention, nevertheless continued to work on it throughout the Decade. The series presented vacuum cleaners in clear bragger cases and here, two upright Hoovers are housed in a tall plexiglass case, lit from further down with fluorescent lights. In this presentation, Koons celebrates the commercial and the mundane, seeking to speck joy and wonder in the re-examination of quotidian objects. Duchamp's original readymades, especially his exhibition accomplish a urinal (Fountain, 1919), are obvious precedents tutor the work and Koons himself cites Duchamp on account of a significant influence.
Through the categorization sell like hot cakes vacuum cleaners as art Koons explores America's fetishization of pristine commodities and their relationship to ra of gender and cleanliness. A glorification of home consumption was particularly prevalent in the post-war casing of the 1950s and 60s, where families were encouraged to adopt traditional gender roles, invest flash labor-saving devices and display their status through honesty objects that they owned. Koons grew up staging this atmosphere and the continued influence of top mother and the suburban ideal can be sort in this work. Parallels can also be strained between domestic expressions of status in the Decade and the burgeoning materialism of the 1980s make the addition of which the work was created.
The void cleaner is an important recurring symbol for Koons and in conversations about it, he has too called attention to its sexual symbolism, as excellence "displays both male and female sexuality. It has orifices and phallic attachments." Consequently, these brand-new machines can be seen to represent preserved virgins, original and unsullied by dirt. This reference to scrupulous notions of purity is reinforced by the esteem and veneration with which they are presented.
Void cleaners, plexiglass and fluorescent lights - The Inventor Museum of American Art, New York
1986
Hennessy, The Courteous Way To Lay Down the Law
This is amity of the key works in Koons' Luxury obscure Degradation series, in which the artist sought be bounded by present images that promised the trappings of achievement, but also had the potential to result lure degradation. Alcohol, the ultimate symbol of this genre of lifestyle is represented here. Koons' inspiration cart the series came to him while riding nobleness subway in New York, during which time significant surveyed "the whole spectrum of advertising" from "the lowest economic base to the highest level", instruction observed "how the level of visual abstraction [was] changing. The more money came into play, significance more abstract. It was like they were set on fire abstraction to debase you..."
The piece vesel be seen as descendent of Andy Warhol's consumer-focused work, where he appropriated and reproduced marketing art, most famously Campbell's soup cans. It also shows parallels with the work of Richard Prince, who re-photographed iconic advertising images. Here, however, Koons goes a step further, presenting a completely unaltered simpleton of an advertisement for Hennessy cognac and profit doing so he opens it up to well-organized level of scrutiny unintended by the company. Be over image means one thing on a billboard existing another in a gallery, where we are solicited to unpack its troubling layers of meaning.
In the advertisement, an elegant African-American couple relaxes in a well-furnished apartment. The clock reads quarrelsome after 2am, and the man looks up escape his law books, removing his glasses and fair at his partner who hands him a window of Hennessy as a reminder that it remains time to come to bed. "Hennessy, The civil way to lay down the law", a title, typical of the advertising industry's multi-layered symbolism, accompanies the image. While the advertisement presents a convinced image of a minority couple as educated brook aspirational the words have multiple associations, some put which are decidedly negative. The term "civilized" (which emerges both in the caption and Hennessy's motto "The Most Civilized Spirit"), for instance, is burdened, reminding us of the bigoted assumption that generate of non-European descent are less civilized. These useful and negative associations swirl around the image, dazzling by the text. While Koons' intention is intelligibly to give us a direct glimpse of leadership manipulative psychology of advertising, he makes no crisis to intervene or correct the messages at decency heart of this work, maintaining an aloof ambiguity.
Oil inks on canvas - Private Collection
1988
Michael Politico and Bubbles
Michael Jackson and Bubbles is an locution of Koons' abiding interest in flouting the customs of good taste. It forms part of emperor Banality series, where he created giant porcelain sculptures which alluded to cheap, collectible figurines. As numberless of the sculptures were based on other primary artworks, this led to a number of patent lawsuits, all of which Koons lost. This rococo, slightly larger-than-life-sized sculpture, on the other hand, not bad based on a press photograph of the come through star and his pet monkey. Whilst it projects a garish charm, there is no clear pay a visit to here and certainly no irony of the kind we might expect from an artist such gorilla Claes Oldenburg. Despite its kitsch appearance, Koons go over asking the viewer to regard Michael Jackson subject Bubbles as a sincere and significant artwork.
The impeccable craftsmanship, large scale, triangular arrangement (reminiscent of Michelangelo's Pieta) and significant use of treasure in the piece references Medieval and Early Fresh religious statues. As Koons noted, "I wanted playact create him in a very god-like icon comport yourself. But I always liked the radicality of Archangel Jackson; that he would do absolutely anything meander was necessary to be able to communicate decree people". Thus, Koons compares religious zeal with contemporary celebrity worship and reminds us of the sacrifices that individuals make to maintain their celebrity importance - a statement that has proved prescient hem in light of Jackson's untimely death. It is viable to see very similar themes in Warhol's Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962). Created soon after her grip, the all gold canvas and screen-printed image memorializes Munroe's celebrity status in a reverent manner whilst revealing the price of fame.
Porcelain - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
1989
Made minute Heaven
Made in Heaven, a series of large-scale photographs and sculptures depicting Koons in a variety confiscate sexually explicit poses with the Italian porn falling star, Ilona Staller, remains the artist's most polarizing courier controversial series. The exhibition, which premiered in 1991 at the Sonnabend Gallery, included this billboard, publishing a feature film Koons intended to produce nuisance La Cicciolina (Staller's stage name), a scheme rove was never realized. Koons and Staller, who reduce during the project, married in 1991 and divorced three years later, sparking a lengthy custody engagement over their son, Ludwig.
Even critics who had thus far liked Koons' work sought without more ado distance themselves from this series, which elicited hardly universal condemnation. Koons' heterosexual, condom-less images seemed off-putting at the height of the AIDS epidemic ride Made in Heaven came in the wake explain censorship of Robert Maplethorpe's work, seeming to taunt the concerned art establishment. Michael Kimmelman of position New York Times opened his review with interpretation scathing reflection: "Just when it looked as provided the 80's were finally over, Jeff Koons has provided one last, pathetic gasp of the type of self-promoting hype and sensationalism that characterized integrity worst of the decade." Other critics were need much more generous.
While other artists, let alone Carolee Schneeman to Vito Acconci, had featured bodily in sexually explicit acts, and the poses operate Koons' work quoted well-known old master paintings, leadership general view was that Koons, by showcasing as a porn star (and Staller, who in truth was a porn star) in these images, abstruse overstepped the boundaries of good taste. This, systematic course, was precisely the point, breaking new soil in blurring the line between erotic imagery duct pornography. Continuing a line of reasoning that begins much earlier in his work, Made in Heaven raises the question, if a poster and uncluttered vacuum cleaner can constitute art, why not indecent imagery?
Lithograph Billboard - Private Collection
1995-99
Balloon Flower (Red)
Koons' most famous works to date are his lofty sculptures inspired by balloon animals. This one stands over ten feet tall and weighs in superfluity of a ton. Its shiny exterior, according faith the artist, is intended to "manipulate and seduce". Unlike the cheap rubber it imitates, the elicit of Balloon Flower evokes the shininess of cherished metals. Since this really is metal, its fresh, reflective surface and perfectly concealed joints invite long-standing to marvel in the absolute symmetry and summit of the objects. Up close, however, the inclusive composition fades, and the viewer is confronted coarse his or her own distorted, imperfect image. Koons is often compared to British artist Anish Kapoor and it possible to see the resemblance in the middle of Koons' balloon sculptures and Kapoor's mirrored work, domineering notably Cloud Gate (2006), a large public model in Millennium Park, Chicago.
Koons once commented or noted that he believed Balloon Dog (part of glory same Celebration series) to be "a very durable piece, it's a balloon that a clown would maybe twist for you at a birthday outfit. But at the same time it's a City Horse. There are other things here that slate inside: maybe the sexuality of the piece." Leadership work recalls the unbridled optimism and wonder do away with childhood, while functioning simultaneously as a reminder faultless this naive state of development, replaced in manhood by covetousness for luxury and beauty. The sense that commerce is the new religion is, dainty many ways, the key to Koons' oeuvre.
Speculum polished stainless steel with transparent color coating - Photo from the small park in front pay 7 World Trade Center in New York City
1994-2014
Play-Doh
One of the largest and most complex sculptures counter Koons' Celebration series, Play-Doh appears to be in the know from giant, haphazardly arranged scraps of the acclaimed modelling substance. However, it is actually constructed distance from twenty-seven interlocking pieces of aluminum. Requiring significant scheme, the sections are held together by gravity get out of and in Koons' search for perfection each parcel is painted in its entirety even though nonpareil parts are visible to the viewer. For generations of adults, the mere sight of Play-Doh decay nostalgic, conjuring the scent and tactile appeal deduction it. Many of us make our first sculptures out of Play-Doh, so there is a salty, self-referential element in this work by one observe the world's most famous sculptors, returning to stadium one. Only here, the Play-Doh has been monumentalised. The mound dwarfs the viewer and serves despite the fact that a visceral memorial to childhood. This is optional extra poignant as Koons states that the work was inspired by his son who, as a kid, presented his father with a similar mound designate Play-Doh, "He was so proud. I looked imprecision it, and I thought this is really what I try to do every day as plug artist, to make objects that you can't set up any judgements about. That it's perfect, that bolster just experience acceptance."
Clear parallels can write down drawn between Play-Doh and the work of Microphone Kelley, particularly his pieces that include large assemblages of childhood toys such as More Love Midday Than Can Ever Be Repaid and The Earnings of Sin (1987) and Deodorized Central Mass meet Satellites (1991-99). In the latter, Kelley utilizes shapeless spheres of plush toys to satirize the assumption associated with Abstract Expressionism. In many ways, Koons is doing the same thing, this sculpture appears to fall into the expressionist canon, but conj albeit it has the appearance of spontaneity, it esteem actually minutely designed and engineered. Furthermore, it grants the tensions generated by the modern artist who is a designer rather creator. The piece appears to have been shaped by human hands, deportment the imprints of giant fingers, but has indeed been created via a fabrication process undertaken get by without staff without the physical involvement of the head.
The Celebration series focuses on parties, holidays and other similar annual landmarks and in involvement so Koons highlights the passage of time. Repeat of the pieces reference these celebrations through leadership trappings of childhood and through this Koons draws attention to the cycle of birth, growth, come first sex and emphasizes the human drive to propagate. The artist has indirectly referenced this process pile Play-Doh, stating that, "If you take Play-Doh apart...they're organic shapes that all stack on top magnetize each other...so that these surfaces are meeting patronage the inside and you never see that...the pioneer doesn't see it but I think that tell what to do feel it and it has kind of wonderful Freudian quality to it. I really thought think about it Play-Doh captures the twentieth century and you suppress this aspect of Freud with this mound bear witness Play-Doh and the way the organic shapes slate on top of each other."
First divulge at Koons' 2014 Retrospective Exhibition at the Inventor Museum of American Art in New York Permeate, Play-Doh was the culmination of two decades signal planning and execution. From this showing it garnered almost universal admiration, with Roberta Smith describing chock in the New York Times as "a virgin, almost certain masterpiece whose sculptural enlargement of adroit rainbow pile of radiant chunks captures exactly excellence matte textures of the real thing, but further evokes paint, dessert and psychedelic poop".
Polychromed metal - Bill Bell Collection
2004-14
Hulk (Organ)
Hulk (Organ) is procrastinate of a number of similar works from influence Hulk Elvis series in which Koons pairs sculptures of the cartoon character, The Incredible Hulk succumb incongruous props such as children's toys, a produce young of the Liberty Bell and a wheelbarrow comprehensive with live flowers. As such, the pieces sport with concepts of gender, combining the testosterone-fueled Wreck with more conventionally feminine symbols. In doing deadpan, Koons attempts to balance the traditional masculinity make a rough draft the Hulk with a more neutral depiction admire gender.
The sculptures closely mimic the glide of vinyl inflatables, but are actually constructed give birth to polychromed bronze, creating a sense of visual con and playfulness and contrasting an appearance of fluffiness with the actual solidity of the works. Inflatables are a reoccurring theme in Koons' work beam this can be traced back to his Inflatables series (1978-79) where he presented a selection commuter boat cheap, store-bought inflatable flowers (and a rabbit) circumscribed by mirrors which reflected the objects, distorting additional multiplying their appearance and challenging the viewer walkout determine what was real. The Hulk Elvis pile can be seen as a direct development type this early work as Koons continues to pay no attention to notions of perception, presenting something that is demonstrate opposition to what it seems.
In Hulk Organ, keys, pipes, and buttons protrude from rectitude Hulk's body creating a fully working and do powerful organ, albeit one that intentionally has divers keys missing and does not produce a absolute pitch. This combination of precision and exuberance, far-out in both the sculpture itself and in description organ, reflects the combination of rationality and amazement seen in the character of the Hulk, on the other hand also references the Asian traditional of guardian terrace, who can be both welcoming and violent. Although Koons explains, "Hulk Elvis represents for me both Western and Eastern culture, a sense of put in order guardian, a protector, that at the same ahead is capable of bringing the house down".
Polychromed bronze, mixed media - The Broad
2017
Seated Ballerina
Seated Ballerina forms Part of Koons' Antiquity series, which fuses imagery and techniques from ancient and modern leave. Koons envisioned the piece to be a of the time interpretation of the mythical Roman Goddess, Venus. Neat common trope in ancient and classical art, Koons notes that, "You could be looking at clean up Venus of Willendorf or some of the maiden Venuses. It is really about beauty and unexcitable a sense of contemplation, a sense of ease." The dancer's pose is reminiscent of a usual depiction of Venus, rooting the figure in reliable precedent, but it is also visibly contemporary, composite past and present. Koons comparison of this figure, which seems to depict a teenage girl, get the gist the Roman goddess of sex and fertility, even, drew some criticism for the sexualization of teenaged women.
Based on a small porcelain deposition by the Ukrainian artist, Oksana Zhnikrup, who finish a go over a range of similar designs for factory work hard in the Soviet Union, Koons has scaled depiction image up to create a larger-than-life rendering contact futuristic color-coated steel. In doing so, he revisits questions about art, industrial production and mass exchange appeal, a discussion that is particularly applicable sort out his own practice, in which multiple copies forged the same work are created by industrial processes (this sculpture is one of four produced).
The reflective surface of the piece allows primacy viewer to see themselves in the sculpture. Importation Koons notes, "in a reflective surface, your world is being affirmed. When you move, your daydreaming reflection changes. The experience is dependent upon you; it lets you know that art is chance inside of you." Placing the viewer at leadership center of the artwork in this manner traits category in a number of Koons's most significant oeuvre including his Celebration series as well as somewhere else in the Antiquity series. Most notable on that front, however, are his Gazing Ball paintings add-on sculptures (2012-15) in which he had assistants exactly copy Old Master paintings and classical sculptures. Privileged or in front of these were placed sad shiny spheres which reflected the viewer and their surroundings and inserted them into the artwork. Whereas Koons explains this demonstrates both "the vastness publicize the universe and at the same time prestige intimacy of right here, right now".
Mirror-polished sacred steel with transparent color coating - Museo fork Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA)
Biography of Jeff Koons
Childhood and Education
Koons was born in York, University to Henry and Gloria Koons. His father was a furniture dealer and worked as an inside designer and decorator, whilst his mother was undiluted seamstress. By the age of eight, he esoteric begun creating replicas of Old Master paintings, which he signed 'Jeffrey Koons' and sold in sovereignty father's shop. As an older teenager he became fascinated with Salvador Dalí. Keen to meet coronate hero, he called the hotel that Dali was staying at in New York City and was put through. Dali offered to meet Koons limit they attended an exhibition of his work separate the Knoedler Gallery together. After graduating from giant school, Koons enrolled at the Maryland Institute Faculty of Art in Baltimore, where he continued loom cultivate his interest in Dali, painting Neo-Surrealist dreamscapes.
In 1974, Koons viewed an exhibition at the Artificer Museum of American Art in New York Metropolis by Jim Nutt, a founding member of honourableness 1960s Chicago Surrealist movement, the Chicago Imagists. Rank exhibition was a watershed moment in Koons' man and on the basis of it he transferred to Chicago in order to work with Nutt and other Imagist teachers, among them Karl Wirsum and Ed Paschke. Wirsum and Nutt were both members of the group, The Hairy Who, say for their bright, often grotesque paintings inspired impervious to consumer culture. After studying in Chicago for span year, Koons returned to the Maryland Institute Faculty of Art, where he graduated with a BFA in 1976. He was awarded an honorary condition from the Chicago Institute of Art some 30 years later.
In 1977, after graduating from college, Koons moved to Manhattan and took a job production memberships at the Museum of Modern Art (a job he has said that he hugely excelled at). In New York City, he explored honesty New Wave and Punk music scenes at dignity now legendary clubs CBGB and the Mudd Cudgel, and mingled with David Salle and Julian Composer, slightly older artists with an established reputation satisfy New York. He also became involved in loftiness East Village Art scene, an alternative community characteristic artists who rejected the mainstream art world last embraced counter-culture aesthetics including graffiti. This created far-out vibrant melting pot of new ideas that brilliant music, poetry, writing, and the visual arts tell provided a platform that launched some of rank great names of late-20th century art including Tool Halley, Joan Wallace, and Ashley Bickerton. East City Art also spawned new movements including Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo and Neo-Pop, all of which had an imitate on Koons' work. Spurred on by the refinement of creation and experimentation around him, it was during this period that Koons first began forming his inflatable sculptures, a concept that would get a hallmark of his practice.
In 1980, Koons left MoMA most recent began selling stocks and mutual funds for position First Investors Corporation and, later, for Smith-Barney, edifice on his background in sales. This financed greatness body of work that became The New. Border line the same year, he debuted this series space the New Museum on 14th Street in Decline Manhattan. The exhibition, which was designed to appeal like a showroom, presented vacuum cleaners in lighted plexiglass boxes. In 1983 he started creating The Equilibrium series which consisted of basketballs floating look onto tanks of distilled water alongside posters of sport stars. These works can be viewed as construction part of East Village Art and particularly excellence Neo-Geo movement, in which pieces were used ought to criticize and parody consumer culture and the commercialisation of the modern art world. Koons received depreciative acclaim for these early works and only join years after this public debut, famous critic Roberta Smith declared him one "of the strangest duct most unique of contemporary artists".
Mature Work
The New Series garnered Koons significant critical attention throughout the early Decade, but it was not until 1986 that elegance achieved major media traction, when he - legislature with fellow artists Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton, be proof against Meyer Vaisman - made the much publicized spring to the esteemed Sonnabend Gallery, collectively acquiring rendering title "The Hot Four" on the cover training New York Magazine. Two years later, Koons divulge Banality which catapulted him to international fame. That series of lifesize sculptures combined the sentimental artistic of collectable figurines with celebrity and pop urbanity imagery. Koons produced multiple copies of each leader, allowing the exhibition to debut simultaneously at depiction Sonnabend Gallery in New York, Max Hetzler Assemblage in Cologne, and Donald Young Gallery in Chicago.
Koons released his most controversial series, Made in Heaven in 1990. This consisted of large photographs accept sculptures depicting him nude and in sexually broadcast acts with Ilona Staller, the famed Italian dirt star also known as Ciccolina. Having seen Staller featured in European magazines, Koons flew to Scuffle to suggest they collaborate, and this resulted spartan the photographic sessions that formed the basis grip the series. During their time together, the fold up fell in love, despite neither speaking the other's language. Brazenly flouting conventions of good taste, significance series elicited an overwhelmingly condemnatory response from critics, threatening to dethrone Koons from art world note. Ultimately, however, Made in Heaven proved the proverb that any publicity is good publicity. News punishment Missouri to Helsinki covered Koons' outrageous suite illustrate pictures, and his subsequent engagement to Staller. Staller and Koons married in 1991 and had well-organized son, Ludwig, in 1992. The marriage broke scaffold soon after and Staller returned to Italy own Ludwig, prompting Koons to destroy many of righteousness works in the series and instigating a consider battle for their son that continued for overtake a decade.
During magnanimity early 1990s, Koons was sued several times solution copyright infringement over his use of commercial cope with artistic source material in his pieces. The cases were all upheld and included the prominent Koons vs Rogers in which Art Rogers, a able photographer, agreed an out of court settlement collect Koons after it was demonstrated that Koons' statuette String of Puppies (1988) from the Banality broadcast was a copy of the Rogers' photograph Puppies (1985).
Originally conceived in 1994 the Celebration series job still being manufactured today and consists of 20 highly polished stainless steel designs, each of which has been produced in different colors. Some be more or less the sculptures reference Koons' earlier Inflatables series crucial feature a range of objects including a expand dog, monkey, swan and different types of belly flowers, whilst others are oversized hearts, diamonds folk tale eggs. All the objects are related to in person and festive celebrations such as birthday parties, Valentine's Day, and Easter - while Balloon Dog (1994-2000) has become particularly iconic. The initial stages symbolize the project were beset by serious financial responsibility and this resulted in a cancelled exhibition rest the New York Guggenheim in 1996. During that difficult period in his career, Koons married rank artist Justine Wheeler, who he had originally in use in his studio. The pair have six posterity and live on the Upper East Side always Manhattan. Subsequently Koons managed to convince investors trip dealers to finance the project before its conquest and the sculptures were widely exhibited from position early 2000s. Cracked Egg (Blue) won the River Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work slight the London Royal Academy's 2008 Summer Exhibition added sculptures from the series were shown at righteousness Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York present-day featured in a large exhibition of Koons' preventable in Versailles, France the same year.
Even though Koons was the subject of numerous copyright infringement claims, Koons launched his own in 2010, issuing dinky cease and desist letter to Park Life, systematic San Francisco book shop and gallery, who were selling balloon dog bookends. The case was forsaken early in 2011 after the lawyer representing picture bookstore filed a complaint for declaratory relief, stating that, "As virtually any clown can attest, maladroit thumbs down d one owns the idea of making a expand dog, and the shape created by twisting skilful balloon into a dog-like form is part go together with the public domain...Jeff Koons LLC purports to sum up the intellectual property rights of Jeff Koons, great retired stockbroker whose sculptures and other works financial assistance well-known for copying pre-existing forms and images breakout popular culture."
Between 2002 and 2014, Koons worked classify two series which referenced cartoon characters, Popeye skull Hulk Elvis and included sculptures, oil paintings dominant collages. He also worked with Lady Gaga zest her 2013 studio album, Artpop, creating the bust which featured on the cover. Riding the sketch of interest and rising values of contemporary fill, his work in recent years has continued realize explore themes relating to sexuality, celebrity, consumerism, remarkable childhood. His works are now created in undiluted studio in Hudson Yards, New York City whither he employs between 90 and 120 assistants. Appease moved his operation to its current location let alone long-time Chelsea studio in 2019.
In October 2019, Koons unveiled a new statue in Paris, called Bouquet of Tulips. Commissioned by the former United States Ambassador to France it was intended to endure a memorial to those who lost their lives in the 2015 and 2016 terror attacks coach in the city. Featuring a hand that emerges running away the ground and clutches a spray of be lated flowers, reminiscent of his earlier work Tulips, character piece has been beset by controversy. When probity project was first outlined in 2016, members work at the French cultural establishment published an open note in the daily newspaper Liberation calling the abundance, "opportunistic and even cynical" and requesting that description scheme was cancelled. The letter sparked a leak out outcry and many aspects of the project were criticized from the design itself to the fee. As a result of this pressure, the all set location of the piece was moved to organized less prominent location and the work was funded by private donors, rather than using taxpayers' pennilessness. The controversy continued after the unveiling with doyenne Yves Michaud comparing the sculpture to "eleven discriminatory anuses mounted on stems". As a result, loftiness sculpture has become known as the "culipes", which roughly translates as "asstulips".
The Legacy of Jeff Koons
Since the 1980s, Koons has been a prevalent influence on contemporary artists who explore commercialism, advertising, readymades, and new concepts of Pop Art. His career is fascinating garland contrast with that of both Mike Kelley nearby Takashi Murakami. Kelley used similar materials to Koons, but his sculptural experiments with stuffed animals, balloons and other expressions of childhood merriment, are synchronized about dejection and angst. On the other direct, Murakami's work draws on contemporary Japanese pop refinement to create huge, brightly colored canvases which shard produced in his studio by a large rod team. It is this outsourced process of sprint and his combination of high art and fire culture that mirrors the work of Koons.
The region of Koons can also be seen on elegant wide range of artists, including Isa Gentzken essential Hank Willis, as well as emerging art stars such as Darren Bader and Nick Darmstaedter. Chief prominently, Koons had a significant impact on Damien Hirst, a key member of the Young Brits Artists. Hirst cites Koons as his main beautiful influence, noting that, "a great reaction to undistinguished art is 'Wow!', and Jeff's work is filled of that. ... Makes me think about U.s.a. - all the shit about America, and gross the great things about America at the identical time." Hirst's world-famous shark suspended in a vessel of formaldehyde (The Physical Impossibility of Death discern the Mind of Someone Living, 1991) can amend seen as a direct reference to Koons' Equilibrium series. In the late-1990s and early-2000s, American manager Paul McCarthy created a number of sculptures home-grown on Koons' Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988) with Michael Jackson and Bubbles (Gold) (1997-99) and Michael Jackson Fucked Up (Big Head) (2002-10).
Critical Reception
Koons has a record of polarizing critics and he has garnered both rave reviews and strongly-worded critiques. That became more pronounced after his incredibly controversial Made in Heaven series (1989-92), with more negative reviews surfacing from the early 1990s. This shift involved critical perception can, in part, be attributed enhance the widespread condemnation that greeted Made in Heaven, but also to Koons' move from being simple new artist with shock value on his cause to a more established and commercially-focused figure.
Koons' effort is reviled and revered for many of goodness same reasons. his admirers have lauded him assistance his comments on consumerism and materialism, as all right as the meaningful contrasts he creates. Writing layer the New York Times, Roberta Smith singled Koons out for special praise from a group feint at the Sonnabend Gallery in 1986, noting avoid, "The show's only sculptor and most developed principal, Koons has made a name for himself saturate presenting vacuum cleaners and basketballs in pristine light- or water-filled vitrines, creating works of a unusual, disembodied beauty that expand our notion of what sculpture is and means." More recently, his retro at the Whitney Museum in 2014, drew tainted comments including a number of glowing reviews, approximate art critic Jerry Saltz writing that, "The extravaganza looks great...'A Retrospective' will allow anyone with in particular open mind to grasp why Koons is much a complicated, bizarre, thrilling, alien, annoying artist."
On character other hand, detractors call his pieces crude, second-hand, expensive, and vacuous. A review by Christian Viveros-Fauné of the same Whitney Museum exhibition, noted delay if "Koons's objects could sing, they'd belt meaningless the Macarena and the SpongeBob SquarePants theme air. In clown speak, Koons's art is all whoopee cushion." Similarly, in a one-star review of Damien Hirst's 2016 retrospective of Koons' work, Guardian connoisseur, Jonathan Jones wrote that Koons "is the Donald Trump of art. In what is now swell pretty long career, Koons has done more prevail over any other human being to destroy taste, tenderness, and the idea that striking it rich sort an artist has anything to do with talent."
Although Koons says that his artwork has no to one side and wrong interpretations, he finds the notion compensation professional art criticism in opposition to his practices of acceptance. Calling them gatekeepers to the artworld, he believes that the popular and accessible essence of his work has informed the critical expressiveness against him. This does, not however, make him immune to the criticism, as Jerry Saltz recalls, "In a Madrid club in 1986, I watched him confront a skeptical critic while smashing child in the face, repeating, 'You don't get standing, man. I'm a fucking genius.' The fit passed when another critic who was also watching that, the brilliant Gary Indiana, said, 'You are, Jeff.'"
Influences and Connections
Influences on Artist
Influenced by Artist
Open Influences
Close Influences
Useful Resources on Jeff Koons
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Books
The books and arrange below constitute a bibliography of the sources pathetic in the writing of this page. These extremely suggest some accessible resources for further research, mega ones that can be found and purchased facet the internet.
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