While a visiting student at the Art Institute, Koons met the artist Ed Paschke, who became a major influence and for whom he worked as a studio assistant in the late 1970s. Koons studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. As a teenager he revered Salvador Dalí so much that he visited him at the St.

As a child he went door to door after school selling gift-wrapping paper and candy to earn pocket money. When he was nine years old, his father would place old-master paintings copied and signed by his son in the window of his shop in an attempt to attract visitors. His father was a furniture dealer and interior decorator his mother was a seamstress. Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, to Henry and Gloria Koons. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings in his works, nor any critiques. Others dismiss his work as kitsch, crass, and based on cynical self-merchandising. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Balloon Dog (Orange) was one of the first of the Balloon dogs to be fabricated, and had been acquired by Greenwich collector Peter Brant in the late 1990s.Ĭritics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. The price topped Koons's previous record of US$33.7 million and the record for the most expensive living artist, held by Gerhard Richter, whose 1968 painting, Domplatz, Mailand, sold for US$57.1 million at Sotheby's on May 14, 2013. On November 12, 2013, Koons's Balloon Dog (Orange) sold at Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York City for US$58.4 million, above its high US$55 million estimate, becoming the most expensive work by a living artist sold at auction. His works have sold for substantial sums, including at least one world record auction price for a work by a living artist. He lives and works in both New York City and his hometown of York, Pennsylvania.

Jeffrey 'Jeff' Koons (/kuːnz/ born January 21, 1955) is an American artist 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.

Jeff koons balloon dog bookends