“He has almost gone
bankrupt developing
his artworks. If he
was interested only in
making money, he could
have made a lot more”
one. They were made in Japan after the war.”
It’s a blonde woman in a bathtub with her
legs raised in the air. “Look, you can move
her legs back and forth and she’s holding
a fan over her breast — it’s very ...” He
searches for the right word before settling
on “sensual”.
And once he has chosen an object, what’s
the next step? Instead of answering, he
starts telling me about his childhood again.
“I grew up in Pennsylvania, in a middle-
class family, my father was an interior
designer ...” I know the script now word
for word. “I don’t want my art to be
intimidating. Some people like to exercise
power by feeling superior to others.”
Eventually he explains how he uses
technology to capture every detail. “I do
CT scans, white light and blue light
scanning until I have every measurement.
We merge these different scans, take
extensive photographs of the surfaces ...”
The Koons studio is effectively engaged
in reverse engineering. Although he does
make some changes — altering colours
or small details — authentic likeness is
important. Some of the sculptures will be
cast in stone, some in metal in specialist
foundries in Germany and the US. They
can take years to make. But one of the
hazards of this kind of work is being sued
for copyright infringement. Koons has
faced lawsuits where he was found guilty of
this. Part of his defence was the sculptures
were “made with the intention to parody”,
which strikes me as a contradiction, given
that Koons says his work is “not a comment
on consumerism”.
The longest he ever took to make a
sculpture was 20 years. Described by
a Christie’s catalogue as a “meticulous,
epic recreation of a child’s toy”, Play-Doh
was inspired by a multicoloured creation
presented to him by his son Ludwig when
he was a toddler. The illusion is perfect, it
looks soft and organic; you want to touch
it and squeeze it in your hands, but it is
rock hard and made of aluminium. There
are five in existence. In May 2018 Christie’s
sold one in New York for $22.8 million.
Damien Hirst — who has been a fan since
his student days — has one in his large
collection of Koons’s work.
But the lengthy production times have
been an issue. Gagosian gallery, which
represented Koons until last year, found
themselves faced with lawsuits from
a hedge funder and a Hollywood filmproducer, who ordered artworks from a
sketch and then got impatient when several
years later they still hadn’t been delivered.
One of the buyers even tried to sell his on
before he got it. Buying Koons became a
futures game. When I ask him about this,
he says: “If you look at the history of making
things, this is not unusual. Michelangelo
took years to make his pieces. Remember
how the Pope got impatient with him [over
the Sistine Chapel]?”.
The artworks at the centre of the lawsuits
were his Balloon Venuses, colossal stainless-
steel sculptures inspired by tiny fertility
symbols dating back to the Stone Age.
When I ask why they took so long to make,
Koons explains that he recreated the shape
of the palaeolithic object using party
balloons, but it took him months working
with a balloon artist to come up with the
perfect model. Then they were stalled for
another year while they waited for space in
a specialist foundry to do the milling, the
machining, the polishing and the painting.
“The idea that Koons is commercially
successful needs examining,” Sturgis says.
“He spends unbelievable amounts of
money developing his artworks and has
almost gone bankrupt several times. If
he was interested only in making money,
he could have made a lot more.”
Koons now has a new gallery, Pace, in
downtown Manhattan. It’s a huge, eight-
storey space with white walls and pale
wood floors, staffed by elegant young
women dressed in black and white. One
of the sales representatives explains to
me that under their new regime “we will
help facilitate production” and “no invoice
will be issued until the work is finished”.
Georgina Adam, author of Dark Side of
the Boom: the Excesses of the Art Market in
the 21st Century, says: “Koons’s monumental
sculptures are trophy works. If you own
a Balloon Dog or the Rabbit you are amonga select few. If you have a megafortune,
there are few things you can spend your
money on that other people cannot. These
sculptures are made very slowly, very
carefully for the super-rich, a bit like the
way Fabergé eggs were made in the past.”
Koons has also indulged in what is
known as “brand stretching” in the
luxury goods market, Adam explains:
“You can buy a Koons porcelain plate
just as you can purchase a Picasso ceramic.”
Then there are collaborations with the
luxury goods industry on, for example,
Louis Vuitton handbags.
In 2017, Jay-Z performed in Britain at
the Virgin V Festival in front of a 40ft
inflatable Koons balloon dog, resulting
in huge coverage for the artist on social
media. And in the song Picasso Baby, Jay-Z
raps: “Oh what a feeling, f*** it I want a
billion Jeff Koons balloons”. Apart from
Banksy, it’s difficult to think of another
contemporary artist who has entered the
bloodstream of popular culture in quite
the same way.
Koons’s latest collaboration is with BMW.
They asked him to make a special edition
of the 8 Series Gran Coupé. “I have a large
family. I’m used to driving around in a van
that can seat 11, but this is something I’ve
designed for myself.” He’s looking forward
to unveiling it at the Frieze Art Fair in Los
Angeles next year. “I feel like a peacock
when I drive it. I want people to look and
say, ‘Wow!’ But I also want them to see
the presence of meaning and history.”
That statement might work for his
collectors and BMW buyers, but I’m not
sure what the art critics will make of it nJeff Koons: Shine is at the Palazzo Strozzi,
Florence, until January 30, 2022; visit
palazzostrozzi.org. Jeff Koons: Lost in
America is at the Qatar Museums Gallery —
Al Riwaq, Doha, until March 31Jay-Z performs in front of a 40ft inflatable Koons balloon dog at the 2017 Virgin V FestivalGETTY IMAGES
The Sunday Times Magazine • 19