The cat is out of the bag - interview with artist Jeff Koons - Interview

Everyone's to know what Jeff Koons is working on. Now the secret's out, let the celebration begin

INGRID SISCHY: When did you begin this new body of work that you are in the process of bringing to life?

JEFF KOONS: I actually started it in 1993, but I have been intensely involved with it since the beginning of 1995. That's when it really came into full bloom.

IS: While you've been working on it, it's as if you've gone underground. You're the opposite of an overexposed artist. I've heard a lot of people say that they'd like to see what you've been up to. Hardly anyone knows just bow ambitious this new project is. You call the new work Celebration, right?

JK: Yes. It will be the first new work I will have shown publicly since I exhibited The Puppy, in Germany, in 1992.

Is: That piece epitomized your ability to attract lots of different kinds of audiences for lots of different reasons. First of all, it was a forty-foot-high puppy covered with growing flowers.

JK: By now it has about seventy thousand live plants on it. I was very pleased that people responded so much to that piece, that they really enjoyed it. I believe it functioned as an archetype.

IS: The pieces in Celebration do too.

JK: It's work that is very personal to me. It has helped me survive as an individual. I also hope it is communicative to other people and gives them a sense of personal value.

IS: I'm interested that you use the phrase "personal value." Among other things, it makes me think about the fact that you're such a perfectionist about the techniques and processes you use to execute your works. It's no secret that your insistence on perfection has been called obsessive, to say the least.

JK: I have the need to maintain a spiritual trust in the work, so if somebody is viewing it they will never feel let down. If they look underneath a piece they will find that it is detailed on the same level as what somebody would term the "front" or the "top" of a piece.

IS: I've never seen such a focus on detail.

JK: At the same time the work has a minimal quality to it, which reduces the detail.

IS: But the detail that remains really gets the Koons treatment. In the past, when the elements haven't been right, you've said, "No. That isn't good enough." You've destroyed some of the work, you've restarted it, you've patched over pieces of paintings. I've seen paintings at your studio that have been doggedly and consistently moving forward, but to some eyes the progress might seem almost imperceptible. Have there been moments where you've gone, "What the hell am I doing?" Have there been moments when you've really felt the pressure to be done already?

JK: I've always finished my work, even in the past when I was trying to make my large porcelain pieces that we had to redo and redo. For me, the process of making my work is a very moral activity. As I said, I want people to trust in the object and the fact that I've tried to create something of value. Therefore, the object needs to be crafted to the highest level. Craft is a tool and a form of value that people can believe in. I follow certain things that give people security and belief in the work, then that gives the work freedom to become art. I want the viewer - no matter who it is, no matter what age they are - to come into contact with the work and find something in it that gives them a sense of self-value or catches their interest. In the long run, I want them to enjoy the work and feel good about themselves. I want them to have a sense that they can accomplish whatever they set out to do.

IS: The kinds of objects and images and ideas that you obviously have an extreme attraction toward are things that everybody can relate to. A lot of it is keyed into childhood - one can really see that in your new work. In it, one can witness how you recognize pleasures that usually get pushed away when we get older. But I want to ask you about your own childhood. Did you always want to be an artist?

JK: Absolutely. I felt like an artist when I was four-and-a-half years old. Art has always helped me define myself. Now I try to let the things that I naturally respond to in life just come forward. All my life the types of images that you are referring to have been the things I liked and really enjoyed visually. They aren't necessarily what one finds in museums, but maybe just walking down the street, or in someone's home.

IS: Because of the baggage that people bring to art, sometimes they can't let themselves be open to art. In fact, when people actually see your work, and the way it is in reality, very few turn away. But there's still a lot of disbelief that goes on with really adventurous art. Like, "C'mon, that guy's just doing a big cat and he's getting all this fuss over it." Of course, the irony is how profound that cat is.

JK: You're talking about the cat in the sock on the clothesline, right? It's an archetype that's going to communicate love. For me, an archetype is bigger than everything else. Its meaning just hits you as a gestalt. The cat [sculpture] is also a crucifixion, because of the configuration of the clothesline and the flowers and the sock.