Since American artist Jeff Koons, during the late seventies, started exhibiting his first inflatable works, he has never left the footlights. Having reached very soon world celebrity, Koons has triggered countless debates within the contemporary art world and wherever he goes he is followed by a multitude of reporters, while his exhibitions are invaded by figures of the star system, billionaire collectors, art lovers and curious people attracted by this artist who has transformed his life into art creating an aureole of gossip around him.
As everyone knows, Jeff Koons is an extraordinary manipulator of modern means  of communication, he is an ambiguous figure between cynicism and amorality; he has definitely been able, with great intelligence, to take over Andy Warhol’s role, refining his communication skills and adapting them to the changing times, seizing a protagonist role in the art system.
As in the rest of his career, Koons does not give up playing, surprising and scandalizing. Without breaking away from considerations on the surrounding world and on problems that afflict contemporary society: first of all, the consumerist culture spread by publicity. But unlike what Pop Art did, Koons does not want to express condemnation or contempt for the consumerist culture, but instead wants to celebrate it, placing himself in contrast to Neo-expressionism and its presumption to go back to “doing painting” or “doing sculpture”, creating artwork from scratch, with a spirit that art critic Robert Smith defines as “the coldness of intellectualism and the contempt for manufacture”. Works that are apparently “obsequious” that fish out from the contemporary mass media and comic icons, glittery aesthetics, art that talks about libido and tension.
Therefore, it is surprising that Koons defines his work as rather conceptual and metaphysical and it useful to find out that beyond Cicciolina, his works reward Dunchamp’s Ready Made, the appropriation methods of conceptual art that meet with craftwork and minimalist essentiality. With a continuous ludic attitude, Koons transforms market-style kitsch objects, erotic fantasies and images which are typical of childhood into museum art. There is no need to invent the subject of works of art, as all that it is needed, he claims, is around us: “I have always done assemblage and collage. Whether it was the banality of a basket ball in an aquarium or  a child pushing a pig, they are always collages”.
From being a great stock market agent, with great knowledge of commercial and economic phenomena, Koons has also became the most interesting figure within the art market. His way of  marrying art and business has created many vitriolic criticisms, for instance the “New York Times” wrote: “The prices of works realized by artisans from Northern Italy vary from 50 to 150 thousand dollars. These works are representative of a culture that is starving to adore and consume”; while the magazine “New Republic” claimed: “He is only a decadent artist. […] He is another of those artists at the service of rich uncultured people”.
Apart from these acid criticisms, Jeff Koons is the actual King of the contemporary market. Absent from international auctions until 1990, nine years later Koons saw his “Pink Panther” come close to two million dollars. In 2001, when transport magnate Astrup Fearnley spent 6.4 million euros to purchase “Michael Jackson and Bubbles”, many were left astonished. Without forgetting the outstanding performance of “Hanging Heart (Magenta-gold)”, sold a few months ago by Sotheby’s for 23.5 million dollars, making Koons the highest paid living artist in the world.
Jeff Koons’s great prestige within the economic sector of art is mainly due to a very important entourage. The artist has always been supported by Eli Broad, famous collector who, in his museum in Los Angeles, houses about twenty works by Koons, and many of these are also owned by French François Pinault, (owner of Christie’s and of a luxury holding company), without leaving aside Greek Dakis Joannou, adman Charles Saatchi and multibillionaire Stephan Edlis, who owns one of the most important collections of contemporary art. Besides these great authorities of art collecting, Koons also has the favour of great gallery managers whom he has worked with without ever binding himself to anyone: for instance Ileana Sonnabend, Jeffrey Deitch, Donald Young, Max Hetzler, Anthony d’Offay and Larry Gagosian.
If you do not want to miss out on this talented artist, we suggest two unmissable events. Jeff Koons is protagonist, from 31st May to 21st September, of a retrospective displaying thirty years of millionaire masterpieces at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. While the Metropolitan Museum of New York is exhibiting, until 26th October, some recent monumental steel sculptures coloured by Koons in his roof garden. Another exhibition of the US artist will be inaugurated at the Versailles castle in September. (translated by Giorgina Arcuri)