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Christie’s to Offer $20m Koons Play-Doh Work in May

April 3, 2018 by Marion Maneker

Jeff Koons, Play-Doh (~$20m)

Christie’s have announced for their May sales the first time one of Jeff Koons complex and exacting Play-Doh works have come to the market. A star attraction at his Whitney retrospective (Bill Bell Jr. loaned his edition of the work to the museum show), Play-Doh is ten feet high. It is constructed twenty-seven pieces of painted aluminum, exactly replicating a mound of Play-Doh made by his son. Koons has said of the work that he wanted to capture the exact moment before person tears the play-doh apart. The edition of five Play-Dohs took 20 years to realize in the manner Koons found acceptable. Over the course of the work’s production, the cost of fabrication soared. If the seller gets the $20m Christie’s is hoping for (and initial reactions to the estimate is that it is conservative) , there may not be much profit in it for him or her.

  • Jeff Koons, Play-Doh polychromed aluminum, 124 x 152 1/4 x 137 in. Executed in 1994-2014. This work is one of five unique versions. Estimate is in the region of $20million

The sculpture will be on view in New York for Classics Week (April 13-18); during the Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale select highlights view concurrent with our exhibition for our Rockefeller Sale (April 28- May 5th); and during 20 Century week leading up to the auction (May 12-17th).

 

Koons’ Bouquet of Tulips Wilts for Parisian Art Elite

January 22, 2018 by Marion Maneker

The gift that Jeff Koons wants to donate to Paris is provoking a backlash towards the artist. At issue is the fact that the work, meant to commemorate recent terror attacks and evoke the Statue of Liberty required both fundraising and municipal expenditures. There’s also a number of questions about its location.

Today, Liberation published a letter signed by two dozen leading French intellectual figures rejecting the gift. In it, we can see the danger of Jeff Koons losing his credibility as an international artist as the group declared the work more “product placement” than art:

“A brilliant and inventive creator in the 1980s, Jeff Koons has since become the emblem of industrial art which is spectacular and speculative,” the letter states.

Here are a list of the signatories which include some prominent artists, gallerists and collectors:Continue Reading

Koons Is King of LA, MoCA Fundraiser Reinforces

May 1, 2017 by Marion Maneker

MOCA director Philippe Vergne w/ Jeff Koons’ limited edition Balloon Dog plates, on display … and on sale … here tonight for $9,000 a piece. “It’s a bargain!” #mocagala2017

A post shared by Deborah Vankin (@deborahvankin) on Apr 29, 2017 at 6:49pm PDT


The LA MoCA gala was held over the weekend and the LA Times gave it the live blog treatment. Here are some of the better quotes and an an Instagram post reminding us that Koons’s Balloon Dog plate fundraiser for LA MoCA remains not only one of the most successful fundraising projects in history. Issued in editions of 2300, the plates mimic the five large Balloon Dogs in Koons’s signature colors. With more 11,500 works priced at $9,000—and above on the secondary market—the body of work is among the world’s few nine-figure art works. No wonder Philippe Vergne calls it a bargain:Continue Reading

A French Court Fines Jeff Koons €44k for Copying Naked

March 9, 2017 by Marion Maneker

Jeff Koons, Naked

A French court has ruled that a photographer has the rights to the image that Jeff Koons made into a sculpture early in his career. One of the edition sold for $8m:Continue Reading

Train A-Riiiide, $25m Strong: Koons Jim Beam Train Comes to Market

April 11, 2014 by Marion Maneker

Jeff Koons Jim Beam Train

Christie’s is looking for 5x appreciation on Jeff Koons’s Jim Beam train over 10 years. A version of this work sold in 2004 at Christie’s (pictured) for $5.4m. Next month, they’re going back to the well with hopes of making $25m:

Stefan Edlis, a celebrated Chicago collector and retired plastics executive, is also parting with a valuable Koons sculpture next month. On May 13, Christie’s is selling “Jim Beam J. B. Turner Train,” a 1986 stainless-steel train nine and a half feet long filled with bourbon. Mr. Koons saw a plastic and porcelain version of the train in the window of a liquor store and cast it in steel. The train was part of “Luxury and Degradation,” an exhibition at International With Monument Gallery in SoHo that examined shallowness, excess and the dangers of luxury in the high-flying 1980s.

An Auctioneer Comes Back to the Business (NYTimes.com)

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