Jeff Koons
Since his first solo show in 1980, Jeff Koons has surprised the contemporary art world with assemblages featuring basketballs or vacuum cleaners, his scaled-up, stainless steel balloon animals and easter eggs, and his gold-plated, porcelain sculpture, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988. Born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955, the artist studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, after which he moved to New York and was employed as a security guard at the Museum of Modern Art. During the 1980s Koons worked as a commodities broker, but soon garnered acclaim as a visual artist. In 1992, Koons designed the 43-foot high flower sculpture Puppy for documenta IX in Kassel, which is now on permanent view at the Guggenheim Bilbao. In 2014, the Whitney Museum of American Art organized a retrospective of Koons’ work which traveled the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Guggenheim Bilbao. His work may be found in the collections of the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Tate Modern, London.
Exhibitions
- Jeff Koons: Made in Heaven, Paintings
- Luxembourg & Dayan, New York
October 6, 2010 - January 6, 2011 In conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the original Venice presentation of this landmark series, Luxembourg & Dayan unveiled Jeff Koons: Made in Heaven Paintings (2010–11).
Made in Heaven celebrated, in explicit sexual terms, Koons's union with wife Ilona Staller, the Italian porn star and politician known as La Cicciolina. Depicting the pair as a contemporary Adam and Eve, the series featured works with such titles as Dirty Ejaculation and Ilonaʼs Asshole—generating controversy that overshadowed its complex dialogue with the history of art and Koonsʼs exploration...
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Selected Artworks
- Jeff Koons
- Flower Drawing (Green), 2011
- Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating
- 30 × 30 inches (76.2 × 76.2 cm)
- 10 of 13
- Jeff Koons
- Balloon Swan (Magenta), 2004–11
- High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating
- 138 × 119 × 94 inches (350.5 × 302.3 × 238.8 cm)
- Jeff Koons
- Wall Relief with Bird, 1991
- Polychromed wood
- 72 × 50 × 27 inches (182.9 × 127 × 68.6 cm)
- 3 Editions, plus 1 AP
- Jeff Koons
- New Shelton Wet/Drys 10 Gallon, New Shelton Wet/Drys 5 Gallon Doubledecker, 1981–86
- Four vacuum cleaners, acrylic, fluorescent lighting
- 82 × 52 × 28 inches (208.3 × 132.1 × 71.1 cm)
