Jeff Koons valuation
Vacuum cleaners in vitrines, basketballs in tanks, and a stainless-steel rabbit with no face.
Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955 and worked as a commodities broker on Wall Street while making the early work.
What a work by Jeff Koons is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955 and worked as a commodities broker on Wall Street while making the early work. The New series put unused vacuum cleaners in lit acrylic vitrines; Equilibrium suspended basketballs in tanks of distilled water; Banality produced the porcelain Michael Jackson and Bubbles; and the Celebration series turned party objects into monumental mirror-polished stainless steel — the balloon dogs, the tulips, the rabbit. He runs a large studio, has been through several copyright actions, and has repeatedly held the auction record for a living artist.
Everything hangs on fabrication and condition. The polished stainless works are made to a tolerance that makes any scratch, dent or fingerprint mark permanent and effectively unrepairable, and they must be handled in gloves and shipped in purpose-built crates — original crating is part of the asset. Editions are typically small, of three to five plus proofs, and are frequently in different colours, each a separate work. The porcelain and polychrome wood editions of the Banality series are fragile. Documentation from the studio is expected at every level.
The porcelain Balloon Dogs and other editions
The Koons most people own is a porcelain Balloon Dog: a glazed sculpture on a round base, made with the Limoges porcelain house Bernardaud from 2015, in large numbered editions in red, blue, yellow, magenta and orange. Each is printed on the back with the signature, title, date and number, and comes with a Bernardaud certificate and a fitted box, both of which matter for a sale.
These are genuine editions with an active resale market, valued far below the steel sculptures. Collaborations with fashion and drinks brands, which use his images on bags, bottles and packaging, are branded products rather than editions, and are bought and sold as such.
York, Ed Paschke and Puppy
Koons's father was a furniture dealer and interior decorator in York, and when Jeff was nine he put the boy's signed copies of old master paintings in his shop window. Koons studied painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art and then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he met Ed Paschke and later worked as his studio assistant. In New York he made the Inflatables from 1978, flowers and a rabbit set against mirrors, and first showed The New in the window of the New Museum in 1980. Rabbit, of 1986, recast the inflatable in polished stainless steel for the Statuary series.
Made in Heaven, with his then wife Ilona Staller, was first shown at the Venice Biennale in 1990. Puppy, a West Highland terrier 13 metres tall planted with flowers on a steel frame, was commissioned for Arolsen Castle in Germany in 1992 and re-erected in Sydney in 1995, and Split-Rocker followed in 2000 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon. Each sculpture in the Celebration series, conceived in 1994, comes in five coloured unique versions, and Egg (Blue) won the Charles Wollaston Award at the Royal Academy in 2008. The Gazing Ball paintings, shown at Gagosian in 2015, set a blue glass sphere in front of repainted masterpieces.
Best auction results
- Rabbit $91.1m
- Stainless steel, 1986 · New York · May 2019
- Publicly reported
- At the time, the auction record for a living artist.
- Balloon Dog (Orange) $58.4m
- Stainless steel, Celebration series · New York · November 2013
- Publicly reported
- At the time, the auction record for a living artist.
Results as reported at the time of sale, inclusive of buyer's premium. They are a record of what specific works achieved on specific days, not a guide to what any other work is worth.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
