Jeff Kons Analysis

Jeff Koons was born in 1955 in York, Pennsylvania to Henry and Gloria Koons. His father an interior decorator instilled an early sense of art into his early life and childhood. He trained as an artist at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and at the Art institute of Chicago from 1972 to 1976. Following college, he moved to join the New York art scene and initially found a job at the Museum of Modern Art. During his time in New York, he began creating art but began to find his endeavors to be overly expensive, in order to fund his creative projects he began to work in Wall Street as a broker. This lasted until 1982 when he returned back to Sarasota to live with his parents and gather funding for his projects. Once he was able to collect himself again he returned to New York and based most of his work around the New York area.

He is perhaps best known for his inflatable pieces produced out of stainless steel such as Balloon Dog (1994-2000) or Rabbit (1986). These pieces showcase prominent features of Koons work: reflective surfaces, aspects of consumerism, a sense of inflation, and show a playful side as well. Following the trend of 1960’s artists, Koons attempted to bring commercial Pop art to the forefront and in many ways his art offered criticism of the art world and Western society. By making objects perceived as easily mass producible and changing their context, he pushed the boundary of meaning and acceptance of the art world. In addition many of his other works produced during his Made in Heaven (1989) period, depicted high controversial and pornographic subjects. Koons has always looked to pushed the boundaries what is acceptable or not in the art