Jeff Koons, interview: I feel that art has allowed me to become a better human

He commands the highest prices of any living artist, but what Jeff Koons wants most is for his work to free our minds, he tells Richard Godwin, as his show opens at Damien Hirst’s gallery
Pop star: Jeff Koons at the Newport Street Gallery in front of Play-Doh (2014), an enlarged aluminium reconstruction of his son’s first attempt at sculpture
Matt Writtle
19 May 2016

You'd forgive Damien Hirst for hating Jeff Koons. The English skull-maker and the American dog-maker are often mentioned in the same breath. They explore similar themes of death, desire and power — Koons in major, Hirst in minor. They operate on a similar scale (massive), command similar prices (massive) and are fond of getting their willies out (no comment). They also inspire similar weary critiques about art bling, the one per cent, their intelligence-crushing crassness. And the fact that Koons, 61, eclipses the younger Hirst, 50, in just about all these pursuits might add a certain edge.

But over at Newport Street Gallery, it’s all happy vibes. Jeff Koons: Now is the second show at Hirst’s impressive £25 million new space in Vauxhall — and it’s certain to pull in the crowds.

All but two of the works on display are from Hirst’s personal collection. He’s been a Koons groupie ever since his young mind was blown by the pop artist’s readymades and glass tanks containing basketballs at Charles Saatchi’s New York Now show in 1987.

Sitting in front of those same works now the older man seems touched. It’s rare for one living artist to pay such a loving tribute to another. “There’s a lot of mutual appreciation there,” says Koons, beaming. “It’s so generous of him to open this up for everyone. To be here today, to have this relationship with Damien, to have this dialogue with you today… I mean, who could ask for more?”

Certainly, gallery-goers will not feel short-changed (the exhibition is free, in any case). There are the virgin vacuum cleaners, inflatable plants and adverts from The New series of the late Seventies; there are two hilariously NSFW canvases from his Made in Heaven (1991) series, which depict Koons having various kinds of sex with his then-wife, pornstar Ilona “Cicciolina” Staller; there’s a huge, happy-making balloon monkey in stainless steel from the Celebration series (mid-2000s); and the most recent work is Play-Doh (2014), a mega-size rendering of Koons’s son’s first attempts at sculpture that took the best part of two decades to reconstruct in aluminium. I defy you not to have fun here.

All happy vibes: Titi, 2004-2009
Jeff Koons

As for Koons the man, his surface charm conceals uneasy depths. He is the world’s most expensive living artist — an orange balloon dog went for $58.4 million in 2013 — and he often appears to relish it. He’s a former commodities trader who dresses like a banker and games the art market expertly, speculating millions on his sculptures, which are put together by a team of about 120 in his New York studio.

He’s dressed in an impeccable navy Dior suit, smiles a lot and speaks in a high voice that makes it sound as if he’s holding something back, a bit like Michael Jackson or Andy Warhol. But he also seeks to reassure, like a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen or an extra-terrestrial welcoming the Starship Enterprise to a wonderful new planet. He’s always been confident, he says — the optimism is totally sincere.

‘Ilona’s Asshole is just a wonderful image — it’s my version of Courbet’s The Origin of the World’

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So too are his childlike preoccupations. I remark that my two-year-old would love the exhibition, with its Lego, trains, basketballs, eggs, Play-Doh — gallery staff will have their work cut out trying to stop everyone touching the metal inflatables which defy you to test their weight. “I hope they don’t touch,” he says (he’s a perfectionist as well as a hygiene freak). “But what I think is really wonderful about childhood is that kids are really open to everything. Children love things for just what they are. Blue is beautiful for blue. Pink is beautiful for pink. There’s an openness — but then society starts to teach judgment and segregation. The reason I use youthful images is to bring you back to that point.”

A child is charmed by a real balloon dog. For the jaded citizens of the 21st century, it takes one of a monumental scale to provide that effect. “And we’re also kind of balloons ourselves. We take a breath and we inflate. But there’s a permanence to the sculpture that we don’t have.”

Unlike the immigrant Warhol — to whom he’s often compared — Koons is a consummate American. He had an idyllic childhood in York, Pennsylvania, where his father ran a furniture showroom. He now has eight children of his own. “I grew up with the idea of being self-sufficient, of enjoying people, of learning to take care of yourself. And then you automatically want to take care of others, of the community.”

There’s little that disturbs his Zen-like calm. However, he does wince when I raise the common criticism that it’s all about money. It’s simply a means to an end, he says. He spent time on Wall Street purely so that he could earn enough to make his early works. Besides, it’s only since the French Revolution that we’ve considered the struggling artist to be the “true” artist.

“If you look throughout history, artists who have participated in this dialogue have always been well taken care of.” Dialogue is his favourite word — that and transcendence.

“What I learned very early on was that people would try to form you into whatever mould they desire,” he sighs. “My art deals with desire but consumerism is just one little aspect of it. I’m more involved in a philosophical dialogue about life, how to come out of Plato’s cave and experience a higher level of consciousness, how to understand the freedom that we have at any moment.”

‘I’ve been working for over four decades now, but I don’t feel I’ve made the work that I’ve always wanted to make. I’d like to make the work that’s really inside.’

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The Luxury and Degradation series that so impressed Hirst was apparently a dialogue about how consumer capitalism creates and manipulates desire. “I think I was always a messenger — I had a message. It’s telling you to hold on to your economic and political chips, not to pursue luxury and to beware of abstraction.”

But isn’t it a failed message, considering his art is now prized by plutocrats as the ultimate luxury? “Well, it may have that association but I think my art wants to inform and educate.” As for the charge of sensationalism, he feels that’s unfair too. The Made in Heaven canvases — including the one of him ejaculating on Staller’s face — are pure, innocent, transcendent works! “A lot of people have a hard time accepting nature, accepting procreation, accepting biology. If you don’t have this self-acceptance, then it really limits you from going any further and entering into a higher realm where you accept other people.”

And I guess it has hidden subtleties. You’re looking at porn but you’re also looking at a man having sex with his wife. What could be more natural than that? And then there’s a more poignant story around the work. Koons’s marriage to Staller ended in acrimony and an agonising custody battle over their son Ludwig. The balloons and baubles he went on to make were really outsized gifts to the boy he was prevented from seeing. They are now in regular contact but the legal bills — as well as spiralling costs of his sculptures — nearly bankrupted him in the Nineties.

He insists that none of this has changed the way he views the work. “There are many pieces in Made in Heaven that I enjoy very much. I mean, Ilona’s Asshole is just a wonderful image — I feel it’s my version of Courbet’s The Origin of the World.”

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Koons has dismissed complex readings of his works in the past but now makes a claim for himself as a metaphysical artist. He’s not scared of ageing — “I try to stay as virile as possible. I train an hour every day” — but he is scared of not realising his potential. “I’ve been working for over four decades now, but I don’t feel I’ve made the work that I’ve always wanted to make. I’d like to make the work that’s really inside.”

Is this a technical limitation? “No, these are limitations of consciousness. It’s about the acceptance of the freedoms that we have.” This is his message, he tells me. He wants us all to be free. “A lot of people go through life without opening up, without participating in acceptance. Acceptance is what removes anxiety. And the removal of anxiety is how you walk out of Plato’s cave.”

Salesman? Shaman? Transcendental cynic? It’s easy to feel a bit like a balloon animal in his presence — airy and manipulated. But he himself is testament to art’s transformative power. “Within art, I feel like I’ve experienced a transcendence. I feel that art has allowed me to become a better human being. And once you’ve had these sensations, you automatically want to share it with others. You want to be as generous as possible. That’s the only desire I’ve had, to share that.”

Jeff Koons: Now is at the Newport Street Gallery, SE11 (020 3141 9320, newportstreetgallery.com) from May 19 until Oct 16

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