Jeff Koons was born on 21st January, 1955 in York, Pennsylvania in the United States. His artistic style features neo pop type of productions that focus on low and high culture, fame and kitsch. He features the celebration of mass produced articles, for instance, vacuum cleaners, basketballs and inflatable toys. As an artist Koons is a great mystery in contemporary art. He is also a primary influence on Damien Hirst and other such artists belonging to the younger generation. He has a dense personality and harbors an obsession with kitsch objects, which leads to confusion on his status as a genuine fan or an ironic critic of consumerism and pop culture. His talent lay in his ability of appropriation. When Koon was just eight years old, he put his signature on his productions of Old Master paintings, signed them “Jeffrey Koons”, and put them up for sale in his father’s shop. He moved to New York after completing his graduation n 1976 from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He acquired a reputation as an ostentatious salesman in New York at the membership desk at the Museum of Modern Art. By this time, his art was audacious in its utilization of inflatable toys and other such readymade objects. The 1980s were characterized by Koon’s type of art as he brazenly promoted himself and put mass... show more

Jeff Koons was born on 21st January, 1955 in York, Pennsylvania in the United States. His artistic style features neo pop type of productions that focus on low and high culture, fame and kitsch. He features the celebration of mass produced articles, for instance, vacuum cleaners, basketballs and inflatable toys. As an artist Koons is a great mystery in contemporary art. He is also a primary influence on Damien Hirst and other such artists belonging to the younger generation. He has a dense personality and harbors an obsession with kitsch objects, which leads to confusion on his status as a genuine fan or an ironic critic of consumerism and pop culture. His talent lay in his ability of appropriation. When Koon was just eight years old, he put his signature on his productions of Old Master paintings, signed them “Jeffrey Koons”, and put them up for sale in his father’s shop. He moved to New York after completing his graduation n 1976 from the Maryland Institute College of Art. He acquired a reputation as an ostentatious salesman in New York at the membership desk at the Museum of Modern Art. By this time, his art was audacious in its utilization of inflatable toys and other such readymade objects. The 1980s were characterized by Koon’s type of art as he brazenly promoted himself and put mass produced items on a pedestal in the art world using an assortment of media. In his production, The New Series created between 1980 and 1983, Koon made headlines by portraying vacuum cleaners sheathed in vitrines. In 1985 he produced the series Equilibrium, which had water tanks with floating basketballs, portraying a chimera or motion and time come to a standstill, thus pursuing his use of objects symbolic of the US culture. He turned around toys and other such objects of no major consequence, creating sculptures of flawless and stunning nature in large-scale productions using materials like porcelain and stainless steel among many others, all through the 1980s. In 1988 he produced the Banality series, creating a full-scale sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles, his (Jackson’s) pet chimpanzee. This raised concerns of celebrity and taste. His infamy increased in 1991 with his tying the knot to Ilona Staller, an Italian porn star who was also a member of the parliament. His first exhibition of his work Made in Heaven at the Venice Biennale is the controversial series he titled thus, depicting his relationship with his wife with overtly sexual detail. His most celebrated work however, is Puppy produced in 1992. It measures 43 feet (12 meters) in height, features a West Highland Terrier and is on display since 1997 outside the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. His love for large-scale artworks commemorating the inflatable world is evident in his focus on this line of art from the mid 1990s. Jeff Koons’ works of art include: Inflatable Flower and Bunny created in 1979 part of a Private collection; Hoover Celebrity 11/ created in 1980 at the Museum
of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, California, U.S.; Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank produced in 1985 part of the collection at the Tate Collection, London, England; Rabbit created in 1986 at the Museum of Modern Art, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.; Michael Jackson and Bubbles 1988 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California, U.S.; Pink Panther created in 1988 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.; Puppy created in 1992 at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain; Balloon Dog (Magenta) produced between 1994 and 2000 part of a Private collection.
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