Artists : Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons is widely considered to be one of the most significant artists to have emerged in the postwar era. Since the late 1970s, his diverse work has explored themes pertaining to taste, consumerism, mass culture, beauty, acceptance, and the role of the artist. Koons is known for working with popular culture subjects and his reproductions of banal objects — such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror-finish surfaces. In 2013, Koon’s Balloon Dog (Orange) fetched $58.4m at auction, what was then the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist. The artist broke any previous record when his iconic Rabbit sculpture sold for more than $91 million at Christie’s Postwar and Contemporary Sale, New York in May 2019, selling for more than $20m over its estimated price and becoming the most expensive work by a living artist to ever sell at auction. Koons reclaimed the title of the most expensive living artist from David Hockney who, just six months erlier, had taken the title with Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures).