Jeff Koons b. 1955

Jeff Koons is an American artist known for his reproduction of ordinary objects. He has held the highest auction sale record of any living artist since 2013, when his sculpture Balloon Dog (Orange) (1994-2000) sold for $58.4 million. Koons studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art. While in college, Koons visited Salvador Dali and worked as a studio assistant for Ed Paschke. Upon graduating in 1977, Koons moved to New York and worked at the membership desk of the MoMA during the day, free to create his artwork at night. He became popular in the 1980s and set up a studio-like factory, similar to Andy Warhol's, in SoHo staffed with 30 assistants.

Koons has created many different series of works as Celebration, which includes his balloon animals and objects, Statuary, composed of his inflatable toys he made in the 70s, Banality, which were a collection of ceramic, porcelain and wood figures and Made in Heaven, a series of photographs shown at the 1990 Venice Biennale. His works have no hidden meaning, but are appealing because of his bold, clean cut and glamorous style. Koons' work stems from his understanding of advertisement and the media, which has won critics over to deem his creations as "high art icons." Koons has also designed cars for BMW, created Lady Gaga's Artpop album cover and is producing a line of fine wines.

Jeff Koons has work featured in the permanent collections of the MoMA in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the LACMA, the Broad Art Foundation in Santa Monica, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Tate Gallery in London, the MCA in Tokyo, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. and the MoMA in San Francisco.

Related Categories: Neo-Geo, Contemporary Pop, Popular Culture, Outdoor Art, East Village Art, Sculpture, Use of Found Objects, Representation of Everyday Objects, Contemporary Re-creations, Large-Scale Sculpture.