Jeff Koons at Versailles 2007, Michael Jackson and Bubbles. Photo: Henning Høholt

VERSAILLES: After a long building periode has now Jeff Koons porcelain sculpture Michael Jackson and Bubbles come home to their new build home in the new Astrup Fearnley Museum at Tjuvholmen, Oslo, Norway. 

Jeff Koons

Presentation: Henning Høholt. Photos from Versailles: Henning Høholt and Tomas Bagackas
. – All copyrights reserved.

Michael Jackson and Bubbles is from the Banality serie. For this project he engaged workshops in Germany and Italy that had a long tradition of working in ceramic, porcelain, and wood. The series culminated in 1988 with Michael Jackson and Bubbles, a series of three life-size gold-leaf plated porcelain statues of the sitting singer cuddling Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee.

But last time i had a meeting with this sculpture was at the large Jeff Koons exhibition at Versailles in 2007-08, where 17 of Koons works were exposed including Michael Jackson and Bubbles, from Astrup Fearnley museum in Oslo.

Honestly it was interesting to see how well Jeff Koons art from his different periodes fitted in to the exclusive surrondings at Versailles, contrasting to to the beautiful interiør and exteriør.

Of course there was protests ations from French artists and their organisations. “Why have Versailles choosen a foreign – American – artist to expose at Versailles”?

Jeff Koons: Balloon Flower 1995-2000- Foto: Henning Høholt

We must not forget tha close relations between France and America, cooperations during the wars, and The Statue of Liberty and many other positive relations. It was a marking of the close relations, but also an ideal possibility to gain more international attention. Good marketing from Versailles.

Jeffrey “Jeff” Koons (born January 21, 1955) is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as Balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces. He lives and works in New York City and his hometown York, Pennsylvania.

Koons’ work has sold for substantial sums of money including at least one world record auction price for a work by a living artist. The largest sum known to be paid for a work by Koons is Balloon flower (Magenta) which was sold for £12,921,250 (US$25,765,204) at Christie´s London on June 30, 2008 (Lot 00012) in the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale.

Critics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch: crass and based on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings in his works, nor any critiques.

Jeff Koons rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated era. He gained recognition in the 1980s and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a SoHo loft on the corner of Houston Street and Broadway in New York. It was staffed with over 30 assistants, each assigned to a different aspect of producing his work—in a similar mode as Andy Warhol´s Factory (notable because all of his work is produced using a method known as Art fabrication. Today, he has a 1,500 m² (16,000 sq ft) factory in Chelsea with 90 regular assistants. Koons developed a color-by-number system, so that each of his assistants could execute his canvases and sculptures as if they had been done “by a single hand”.

Koons has as other artists his different periodes, which I shall not go deeper into, in this presentation, Only mention the one, where Michael Jackson and Bubbles is belonging. Koons:

Banality series

Jeff Koons: MOON (light blue) (1995-2000). Foto: Tomas Bagackas

Main article Banality sculptures. For this project he engaged workshops in Germany and Italy that had a long tradition of working in ceramic, porcelain, and wood. The series culminated in 1988 with Michael Jackson and Bubbles, As mentioned above. Three years later, one of these sold at Sotheby´s New York for $5.6 million
. Two of these sculptures are now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The statue was included in a 2004 retrospective at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, where I met Jeff Koons.  This retrospective exhibition  a year later  traveled to the Helsinki City Art Museum. It also featured in his second retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in 2008. The statue is currently back at the newly opened Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art at Tjuvholmen in Oslo.

Considered as his first retrospective in France, the 2008 exhibition of 17 Koons sculptures at the Chateau de Versailles also marked the first ambitious display of a contemporary American artist organized by the chateau.

The New York Times reported that “several dozen people demonstrated outside the palace gates” in a protest arranged by a little-known, right-wing group dedicated to French artistic purity. It was also criticised that ninety % of the $2.8 million in financing for the exhibition came from private patrons.

Jeff Koons flower bouquet at the Kings bedroom.

Jeff Koons bouquet of flowers in the Kings bedroom. Foto: Tomas Bagackas

Jeff Koons museum solo shows include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (1988), Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (1993), Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin (2000), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2001), the Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli (2003), and a retrospective survey at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo (2004), which traveled to the Helsinki City Art Museum (2005).

Please enjoy our photos.