George Lindemann "Jeff Koons Retrospective To Open at the Whitney" @wsj by ELLEN GAMERMAN
Photos: The Artwork of Jeff Koons
'Loopy' by Jeff Koons © Jeff Koons/Whitney Museum of American Art
In recent days, Jeff Koons worked on installing a huge topiary at Rockefeller Center, promoted an H&M partnership that features his famed balloon dog on a new handbag and appeared naked in Vanity Fair.
If the most expensive living artist at auction has always embraced publicity, he's got it in a bear hug now as he prepares for next Friday's opening of the Whitney Museum of American Art's "Jeff Koons: A Retrospective." It is the 59-year-old's first major museum exhibit in New York. The show marks some milestones for the Whitney, too: the museum's biggest-ever single-artist exhibition, its last show before opening in a new downtown location next year and its most expensive solo retrospective to date.
The artist's auction performance—led by the 2013 sale of "Balloon Dog (Orange)" for a record $58.4 million at Christie's—has never been stronger, with his annual average lot price this year at $2.4 million, according to Artnet. In 2014, he has sold more than he ever has at auction by value—upwards of $112 million, Artnet said.
From his balloon dogs to oil paintings, Jeff Koons is enjoying unmatched success in the contemporary art world. Ahead of his first-ever New York retrospective at the Whitney Museum, WSJ's Ellen Gamerman joins Tanya Rivero on Lunch Break to explain why Mr. Koons is today's most expensive living artist. Photo: Getty
What explains such prices? Fans of the artist point to his ability to push the boundaries of the art world—as he has done with his well-known knack for marketing his own work—as well as his mastery of art history and his sixth sense for finding the next big idea in popular culture. It helps that the art is so accessible: Instead of out-there performances or bewildering installations, he creates gem-colored paintings and seductively shiny sculptures inspired by inflatable toys, sex, cartoons and the like.
"If you look at various aspects of Jeff's career, whether it's his relationship to kitsch and popular culture or his use of technology in fabrication or the way that he thinks about a perfect replication—in each of these areas he's moved the stakes out in the field," said Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney show's curator. "He's just done so many things to change the parameters that art is happening in, even though his work is somewhat traditional."
Over the decades, a cadre of powerful dealers has helped bankroll expensive works by Mr. Koons, whose career has been bolstered by a handful of influential collectors purchasing his works by the dozen. While detractors have never been shy about calling Mr. Koons a master of hype, his biggest backers have been committed to him since the 1980s.
Jeff Koons is the most expensive living artist at auction. Getty Images
A former Wall Street commodities broker, Mr. Koons employs nearly 130 people in his New York studio. He asks them to sign non-disclosure agreements to protect intellectual property and trade secrets around the art and has his employees handle the labor while he focuses on bigger concepts, former staffers say.
"People have a concept of how an artist works—they imagine Jackson Pollock pouring paint over a canvas, they definitely don't imagine a man in an office in a suit thinking up ideas," said New York artist and former Koons studio assistant Jaclyn Santos. "To him, it's not about making a work physically, it's about making the idea."
Mr. Koons was unavailable for an interview. A representative from his studio said the artist is involved in every detail of a work's execution.
His raw materials and construction methods are famously expensive. For certain stainless steel sculptures, fabricators in Germany created an alloy with special reflective qualities. He set up a stone milling facility in Pennsylvania for his granite works. He has involved experts like Bavarian wood carvers and a Nobel-laureate physicist, and used technology found everywhere from hospitals to Hollywood.
'Metallic Venus' by Jeff Koons © Jeff Koons/Whitney Museum of American Art
"There is this whole ecosystem within his organization and outside it, working together to make all of this possible," said Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Bits and Atoms. Mr. Gershenfeld, who has worked with the Koons studio on developing custom hardware and software for 3D models, said some technology he has developed through the collaboration likely will be used commercially.
In her catalog essay for the Whitney show, Artforum editor-in-chief Michelle Kuo wrote that the fabrication of some of Mr. Koons's works has become so technologically complex, production standards for his art in some cases now exceed those found in the aerospace industry or the military.
The artist has been open to unusual business arrangements. Recently, heappeared in a promotional video for the Oceana Bal Harbour, a luxury condo near Miami set to open in 2016. Residents of the roughly 240-unit development will share ownership of two Koons sculptures the developer bought for about $14 million. One of the works, "Pluto and Proserpina," will appear in the Whitney show, with the condo development credited as the owner. Real-estate billionaire Eduardo Costantini, who is spearheading the development, said the works by Mr. Koons were a natural choice given his "very profound identity" as a global artist.
Greek industrialist Dakis Joannou owns close to 40 pieces by Mr. Koons, eight of which he loaned to the exhibit. The art world's devotion to Mr. Koons ultimately comes down to his talent, Mr. Joannou said, adding that he was fascinated by the artist from the start. "I saw in him a man with very ambitious ideas, a man who had huge work," he said. "He has absolutely no limits in achieving his ideas."
Write to Ellen Gamerman at ellen.gamerman@wsj.com