A metallic blow-up bunny, a ginormous topiary terrier, Michael Jackson and his trusty 80’s sidekick, Bubbles, captured in gold leaf; a bizarre dream sequence? No, these are all works from the kaleidoscope world of post-pop artist, Jeff Koons. Born an inventive Aquarius in 1955, Koons became an American artist known for his mostly large scale pieces in sculpture, painting and other forms, characterized by their exaggerated sentimentality and melodrama. The art world refers to him as Neo-Pop or Post-Pop, an art movement of the 1980’s classified as more of a revised form of Pop Art as it captured a rebirth of recognizable people and objects from popular culture.

Koons studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, receiving his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He supported himself, unlike most starving artists, as a Wall Street commodities broker. Nothing like a solid financial sense to fall back on if it turns out no one wants to buy that conceptual sculpture of basketballs floating in a large glass tank. But the overdone, overindulged decade of the 1980’s took much notice of Koons and it turns out, people bought his art.

Similar to the operations of Warhol and Hirst, Koons worked out of a factory sized studio in New York City’s SoHo area with a large staff. Each assistant worked on a different aspect to bring the work of Jeff Koons to life. His use of kitsch imagery as high art and flare for spectacle often brought Koons controversy in both his personal life and work. He was known to have hired an image consultant to revile his public persona, placed ads in art magazines portraying himself as the picture of success, and even referred to himself in the third person in interviews; all as if his persona was as large as the myriad of pieces he created. On the home front, he married Hungarian-born porn star, Ilona Staller in 1991. And as art sometimes imitates life, Koons created Made in Heaven, a series of paintings, sculptures and photographs portraying the couple in explicit sexual positions. They divorced shortly after the birth of their son, Ludwig.

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