Jeff Koons

US artist Jeff Koons (b. 1955) has long been regarded as one of the greatest artists of the postwar era, and with the sale of his iconic stainless steel sculpture "Rabbit" holds the auction record for most expensive work by a living artist. Heavily influenced by consumer culture, he is known for his neo-Pop aesthetic and conceptual skills. Koons has strongly influenced contemporary art with his oversized sculptures of everyday items that often raise questions about high and low culture, made of materials such as stainless steel, wood or porcelain. His works are shown internationally in the most prestigious museums. In 2012, the Fondation Beyeler hosted Jeff Koons’s first museum solo exhibition in Switzerland. The Jeff Koons’s edition "Girl with Lobster," dated 2014, is a composition in which the actress Gretchen Mol seductively posing as Bettie Page with an inflatable lobster. The readymade inflatable toys are a reoccurring motif in Koons’s artworks that first appear in the Popeye series, replete with art-historical references, and contextualized with a pin-up model. A commentary on consumer culture, which often straddles eroticism and playfulness. On top of the photograph, Koons includes his gesture, printed in a reflective silver foil, that alludes to Gustave Courbet’s famously scandalous painting, "L’Origine du monde."