What Jeff Koons did...

Documentary: The South Bank Show: The World of Jeff Koons (ITV 13th December 1992, 60mins) Editor: Melvyn Bragg

Didn't make the art work himself - hired skilled craftsmen

Is the aspect of being an artist to break the rules?
The boundary between what is good and bad. What is quality? When bad becomes good?
Relating to the postmodernist theory of Binary Oppositions
“According to Derrida, it has been a
characteristic of the western philosophical
and scientific tradition since the classical
times to think in binary oppositions.”

He left art school to live amongst society not in the world of 'art student community' to experience the 'real' world so to speak.
He found painting too subjective, he wanted to do something more objective.

Working with things in the real world - he wouldn't manipulate the object just display them. (The New Hoover Convertibles, New Shelton Wet/Drys 5-Gallon, Double Decker)
He took something that was already existing and put it into a different concept.
This relates back to Marcel Duchamp and his 'ready-mades' - The Fountain and the Bicycle wheel on top of a stool - Bicycle Wheel (1913).
The ideas of Duchamp were taken a step further in the mid eighties by Koons.

The traditions of an artist having no money and having to survive on what they had, making their materials with what they had was 'abolished' (if I can use that word to describe what Koons did).
Living in the real world, a mass produced teleological advancing world, Koons picked up on this fact and therefore reflected this in his work by using fabricators and highly expensive materials.

He made people look at the strange upside down world for the first time - basically rubbed our noses in it!
He managed to maintained the integrity and morality about art.
Some may looked at his art very perversely. Take for example the 'Rabbit'. ("Rabbit" Jeff Koons 1986). Stainless Steel 41 x 19 x 12 inches. Here he took something soft and inflatable and made it ridged and impermeable with its wrinkles (so to speak as a balloon animal would be).

Rational with the irrational
He made people try to trust their intuition and understand the past in order to ace pt his work.

Another reason for choosing craftsmen to produce his work was for the public to gain a sense of familiar-ness - so they didn't feel distance from the work.

He was in control of his work like Disney would hire someone to produce a Mickey Mouse statue at Disney World.

The symbols of banality (something that is trite, obvious, or predictable; a commonplace) in Jeff Koons' work flys in the face of the Modern movement. During the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. Decorative (one word to describe it)

“Modernism is a trend of thought that affirms the
power of human beings to create, improve, and
reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific
knowledge, technology and practical
experimentation, and is thus in its essence both
progressive and optimistic.”

His works:
'Michael Jackson and Bubbles', (1988. Ceramic) shows purity and the feeling of being untouchable.
Some people liked this for perverse reasons.

'Puppy' 1992 12m high made of live flowers with steel structure beneath.
Koons said this piece was about generosity and spiritual in meaning.
The undomesticated puppy in front of a baroque setting makes the public feel like they're in Disneyland.

I feel a new name for Koons should be Walt Koons! - creating his own kitsch Disney world.

Ilona on top (Rose Background) (1990) - Cicciolina with Jeff Koons
The image is very objective on a subjective background. Maintaining onto the aspects of romanticism, holding onto many qualities seen in romantic painting.
Another 'fact' within this painting (relating to its trueness) was that Jeff Koons was actually in that position in real life. In this he translated human activity (mostly seen as personal perhaps crude and vulgar and not art!) into a romantic, tranquil, Utopian reflection.

Koon's work is sentimental flat out!

He was an artist which understood art of his time. He was able to leap ahead with prosperity.
The construction of his ideas gave the mass produced culture an iconic push so to speak. Ending the 20th Century.