On 15 May 2019, Christie's sold a stainless steel sculpture of a rabbit for 91.1 million dollars. The work was by Jeff Koons, the world's most highly valued artist.
Jeffrey Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, he moved to New York in the late 1970s, fascinated by the Pop Art movement.
He began working at the Museum of Modern Art, designing his first sculptures of rabbits and flowers using a mixture of plastic and plexiglass.
His career took off in the 80s thanks to two works of art: "The New" and "Banality", which caused a great debate in the art world because of their irreverent and kitschy approach. Using materials such as stainless steel, porcelain and polymers, Koons began creating replicas of inflatable toys, posed animals and pop culture icons.
The most significant and innovative aspects of Koons' work are the methods and tools with which he confronted the fundamental topoi of culture and contemporary art: from materialism to consumerism, from the concept of power to art itself. The themes are the same as Pop Art, the American way of life and the increasingly unbridled consumerism. In Koons' work, banal everyday objects are transformed into pop culture icons: from the latest Hoover model to famous people to childhood objects. Koons reworks and revolutionises the modernist tradition of the past century, drawing on the legacy of Duchamp's Ready-Mades, Dada and Pop Art. His work seeks to 'communicate with the masses', with whom the artist has an ambiguous relationship. If, on the one hand, mass culture remains his primary source of inspiration, on the other, his works clearly express, with a subtle irony, his criticism of a banal and superficial consumerism. Koons is contradictory: he criticises the mass society that has made him rich and famous. There is in this an undeniable irony and a hint of cynicism.
Jeff Koons' success exploded in the 1980s when he created and launched "Rabbit" (1986), a stainless steel sculpture representing an inflatable rabbit, and "Michael Jackson and Bubbles" (1988), a gold porcelain sculpture depicting the famous singer with his chimpanzee.
In the 90s he started his most iconic collection of sculptures: Celebration Sculptures, giant stainless steel sculptures covered in coloured lacquer that recreate the famous animals that are ballooned at children's birthday parties all over the world. In fact, the name 'Celebration', chosen by Koons, not only refers to children's birthday parties, but is also an invitation to enjoy life and celebrate every moment of it.