Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania; as a teenager he revered Salvador Dalì, to the extent of visiting him in the Plaza Hotel. Koons attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art, and studied painting. After college he worked as a Wall Street commodities broker, whilst establishing himself as an artist. He gained recognition in the 1980s, and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a Soho loft on the corner of Houston and Broadway in New York. This had over 30 staff, each assigned to a different aspect of producing his work—in a similar mode to Andy Warhol's Factory (and manyRenaissance artists).

Koons' early work was in the form of conceptual sculpture, one of the best-known being Two Ball 50/50 Tank, 1985, consisting of two basket balls floating in water, which half-fills a glass tank. (The influence on Damien Hirst's later work The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living—a shark suspended in formaldehyde in a glass tank—is unmistakable.)

Koons then moved on to "Statuary", the large stainless-steel blowups of toys, and then a series "Banality", which culminated in 1988 with Michael Jackson and Bubbles—stated to be the world's largest ceramic—a life-size gold-leaf plated statue of the sitting singer cuddling Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee. (Three years later it sold at Sotheby's New York as Lot 7655 for $5,600,000, trebling Koons' previous sale record.)

In 1991 he married Hungarian-born naturalized-Italian porn star La Cicciolina, aka Ilona Staller, who for five years (1987-92) pursued an alternate career as a member of the Italian parliament. His "Made in Heaven" series of paintings, photos and sculptures portrayed the couple in explicit sexual positions and created even more controversy than he had before.

In 1992 they had a son Ludwig; the marriage ended soon after. They agreed joint custody but Staller absconded from New York to Rome with the child, where mother and son remain, despite the award in 1998 of sole custody to Koons by the US courts, which had dissolved the marriage. In the aftermath he stated: "That experience really gave me a sense of responsibility to the public. I was losing my sense of humanity. Now, every day, I feel more and more responsible in the act of communicating and sharing and really trying to be as generous as possible as an artist."

In 1992, to create a piece for an art exhibition in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The result was Puppy, a forty-three feet (thirteen meter) tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy executed in a variety of flowers on a steel substructure. In 1995 the sculpture was dismantled and re-erected in Sydney Harbor on a new, more permanent, stainless steel armature with an internal irrigation system.

In 1997 the piece was purchased by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed on the terrace outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Before the dedication at the museum, a trio disguised as gardeners attempted to plant explosive-filled flowerpots near the sculpture [1], but were foiled by Bilbao police. Since its installation, Puppy has become a noted icon for the city of Bilbao. In the summer of 2000 it travelled to New York City for a temporary exhibition at Rockefeller Center.

In 1999 he commissioned a song about himself, on Momus' album Stars Forever.

In 2001 he concentrated on painting in a series "Easyfun--Ethereal", a collage approach incorporating bikinis (with the bodies wearing them removed), food and landscape - painted under his perfectionist supervision by assistants.

In 2005 he was elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Koons' work is classified as Neo-Pop or Post-Pop, as part of an 80s movement in reaction to the pared-down art of Minimalism and Conceptualism in the previous decade. Although the use of commercial imagery is a starting point, some also see the incorporation of some of the Conceptual approach which implies an irony. Koons denies this: "A viewer might at first see irony in my work... but I see none at all. Irony causes too much critical contemplation," (which in turn might well be perceived as an ironic double bluff).

He caused controversy by the elevation of unashamed kitsch into the high art arena, exploiting more throwaway subjects than ever, for example, Warhol's soup cans. His work Balloon Dog (1994-2000) is based on balloons twisted into shape to make a toy dog. Koons' sculpture differs in two major respects to the original: 1) it is made of metal (painted bright red to give the appearance of balloons), 2) it is more than ten feet (three metres) tall.

Koons has received extreme reactions to his work. Supporters claim (for Balloon Dog) "an awesome presence... a massive durable monument" (Amy Dempsey, ed. Styles, Schools and Movements, 2002, Thames & Hudson), and for other work that they are "wowed by the technical virtuosity and eye-popping visual blast" (Jerry Saltz, art critic for the Village Voice).

However, Mark Stevens of The New Republic dismissed him as a "decadent artist [who] lacks the imaginative will to do more than trivialize and italicise his themes and the tradition in which he works... He is another of those who serve the tacky rich." Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times saw "one last, pathetic gasp of the sort of self-promoting hype and sensationalism that characterized the worst of the 1980s" and threw in for good measure "artificial," "cheap" and "unabashedly cynical".

Whether Koons will be seen in time as a critical commentator in the tradition of the Dadaists and a genuine leader in the controversial tradition of the avant-garde, or merely as a fashionable purveyor of meaninglessness and banality, remains to be seen. However, this judgement cannot be made in isolation from the evaluation of the wider contemporary art scene. He has had an undoubted influence on noted younger artists: his extreme enlargement of mundane objects has been copied by Damien Hirst (e.g. in Hirst's Hymn, an eighteen-foot version of a fourteen-inch anatomical toy) and Mona Hatoum amongst others.

Even a cursory study of history shows that contemporary institutional acceptance (his work has been exhibited in London's Royal Academy) is no reliable guide to the judgement of posterity. What can be said is that at the moment Koons attracts extremes of enthusiasm and vitriol, and that his work is amongst the most expensive in the world.

David Hockney

Hockney, David (1937- ). British painter, draughtsman, printmaker, photographer, and designer. After a brilliant prize-winning career as a student at the Royal College of Art, Hockney had achieved international success by the time he was in his mid-20s, and has since consolidated his position as by far the best-known British artist of his generation. His phenomenal success has been based not only on the flair, wit, and versatility of his work, but also on his colorful personality, which has made him a recognizable figure even to people not particularly interested in art: a film about him entitled A Bigger Splash (1974) enjoyed considerable popularity in the commercial cinema.

His early paintings, often almost jokey in mood, gained him a reputation of leading Pop artist, although he himself rejected the label. In the late 1960s he turned to a weightier, more traditionally representational manner, in which he has painted some striking portraits (Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, Tate, London, 1970-01). He has spent much of his time in the USA, and the Californian swimming pool has been one of his favourite themes (A Bigger Splash, Tate, 1967). Often his work has a strong homo-erotic content. Hockney is a brilliant draughtsman and has been as outstanding as a graphic artist as he has as a painter, his work in this field including etched illustrations to Cavafy's Poems (1967) and Six Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1969). In the 1970s he came to the fore also as a stage designer, notably with his set and costume designs for Stravinsky's The Rake's Progressand Mozart's The Magic Flute produced at Glyndebourne in 1975 and 1978 respectively. The broader style demanded by stage design is reflected in his most recent easel paintings. In the 1980s he has experimented much with photography, producing, for example, photographic collages and -- since 1986 -- prints created on photocopiers. Hockney is a perceptive commentator on art and in 1976 published a book on his own work, David Hockney by David Hockney.

Technically, it is true to say that the Pop movement started with Richard Hamilton and David Hockney in England. Hockney's early work made superb use of the popular magazine-style images on which much of Pop Art is based. However, when Hockney moved to California in the 1960s, he responded with such artistic depth to the sea, sun, sky, young men, and luxury that his art took on a wholly new, increasingly naturalistic dimension. Though one might consider A Bigger Splash a simplistic rather than a simplified view of the world, it nevertheless creates a delightful interplay between the stolid pink verticals of a Los Angeles setting and the exuberance of spray as the unseen diver enters the pool. There is no visible human presence here, just that lonely, empty chair and a bare, almost frozen world. Yet that wild white splash can only come from another human, and a great deal of Hockney's psyche is involved in the mix of lucidity and confusion of this picture.

Piet Mondrian

Due to the artist's less than flamboyant lifestyle and temperament, a Mondrian biography is easily written. This does not however, reduce the importance of the work of this very exciting artist and this Piet Mondrian biography serves as a tribute, as well as a source of information.

Pieter Cornelis Mondrian was born on March 7th 1872 in Amersvoort in central Holland and lived there for the first eight years of his life. He was the second child of four, with two brothers and one sister. His father Pieter Cornelis Sr. was headmaster of an elementary school, a gifted draftsman and amateur artist. Uncle Frits Mondrian was a self-taught painter and commercially successful, even the Russian court bought his work. As Piet Jr. progressed towards abstract art, he came into conflict with uncle Frits, which seems to have had something to do with Piet Mondrian signing his paintings with "Piet Mondrian" (instead of Mondriaan) from 1912 on.
The Mondrians, devout Calvinists, were an artistic family who painted and made music and Mondrian Sr. could afford a decent education for his four children. Early on Piet Jr. proved to have a talent for drawing. His father gave him drawing lessons and took his son to the countryside to sketch. Uncle Frits taught him the basics of painting.
As a teenager Mondrian was thoroughly educated in drawing and visited several schools. His education was complemented by a retired art-teacher Baet van Ueberfeldt. Mondrian Sr. intended his son to become a drawing teacher so that Piet would be able to make a living. Mondrian won his licences and was allowed to teach at primary and secondary schools. With his licences under his belt, having fulfilled his father's demands, Piet Mondrian decided to become an artist, not a teacher, in 1892. His father could not afford an education at the National Academy of Art in Amsterdam, but Uncle Frits managed to obtain an allowance for Piet Mondrian; he was 20 when he moved to Amsterdam.

There he studied either full time or attended evening classes and joined several artist's societies where he exhibited his work, for the first time in 1893 (he was 21). He got some commissions, like a ceiling painting and he applied for several prizes, with varying degree of success. In 1903 (at 31) he won his first prize from the "Arti et Amicitae Society". Traveling back and forth between Amsterdam and various parts of rural Holland he devoted practically all of his time to painting landscapes, first in the style of the "The Hague School", then gradually more and more abstract, omitting details he regarded as irrelevant. The more abstract his work became, the more appreciation and recognition he gained from fellow artists and other forward thinking contemporaries, at the same time the more criticism he met, particularly from Dutch art critics, "This man is totally confused". Particularly important were his trips to Domburg, a small town on an island, that was turned into an artist's community by Jan Toorop, one of the leading Dutch artists then, not in the least because of his organizational flair. Toorop acted as the principle intermediate between the Dutch and French art communities and devoted much of his time to bringing artists together.
In 1909 Piet Mondrian joined a theosophical society, which not only meant a definitive break with the orthodox Christian believe-system of his parents, but also became the foundation of his thinking and the intellectual side of his art. In these years Mondrian begins to resemble Rasputin in appearance (at least I think so) and he meditates. Like many artists of his time, Mondrian can be regarded as a hippy "avant la letre", although later his appearance changes again, making him a sharply dressed man, indistinguishable from your average stockbroker or bookkeeper. This change may be connected to his love of nature and the country, changing into a preference for the city.
In his work this translates into his initial interest in the quasi random and disorderly quality of nature (the way branches on trees grow, the shape and distribution of clouds), which then changes into his well known paintings that consist of horizontal and vertical lines, the horizontal representing femininity and the worldly, the vertical masculinity and the spiritual. In his neo-plasticism he aimed to create a balance between the horizontal and the vertical, in tune with the laws of the universe, as he saw them, and his theosophical believes.

Around 1909, 1910 his breakthrough came insofar that he came to be regarded as one of the leaders of the Dutch avant-garde, of course still getting bad journalistic criticism. In 1910 he became a full member of the jury of an art society. In 1911 he was exposed for the first time by the works of the cubists Braque and Picasso, at an exhibition in Amsterdam. It is assumed that this made him want to move to Paris, the center of French art and cubism. Arriving in Paris in 1912, he quickly became internationally famous with exhibitions in Paris and Berlin. Piet Mondrian lived in Montparnasse, near the Eiffel Tower and enjoyed the city, with it's exhibitions, parties and night-life. He was an avid dancer, preferably with young women. Piet Mondrian sold little in Paris, but made a living copying famous paintings from the Louvre.
In 1914 World War I began. Piet Mondrian had returned to Holland to visit his father who was mortally ill. Trapped in Holland, Piet Mondrian would not see Paris for four years because of the war, his equipment and paintings still in Paris. His father died in 1915. In that year he moved to Laren, in Holland, which then was an artist's community attracting artists like Van Der Leck and Van Doesburg. The latter founded a magazine called "De Stijl" (The Style) for which Piet Mondrian wrote a few articles. Van Doesburg brought together a group of artists that contributed to the magazine. They were of the opinion that artists, architects and sculptors should work together to create a new society that would be in tune with "the laws of the universe". The art that went with it should be clear in form and spiritual, as opposed to earthly. Natural forms were earthly, straight lines and angles spiritual. Thus "it would not be impossible to create a paradise on Earth", they said. Now De Stijl is known as an art movement, almost synonymous with the red, yellow and blue neo-plasticismpaintings of Piet Mondrian.
Not feeling at home in Holland, Piet Mondrian returned to Paris in 1919, where he had a book published, called Le Néo-Plasticisme, containing his essays written for De Stijl and it was translated in German in 1925. In Paris he had some more exhibitions, joined an art group, but perhaps most importantly, he met the American artist Harry Holtzman in Paris, in 1934. Holtzman later enabled Piet Mondrian to go to America, where he had his finest years as an artist.
While in Paris, he painted the walls and furniture of his Paris apartment/studio white and decorated the walls with grey and red cartboard rectangles, as he was living within a painting of his.
During his years in Paris, Mondrian's reputation as an international representative of abstract art grew, but with art-insiders particularly. His paintings still didn't fetch high prices as they never would during his lifetime. Mondrian didn't really seem to mind. He had fulfilled his artistic dreams.
After Hitler had come to power in 1933, Mondrian's work was put on the list of "Entartete Kunst" (degenerate art). Presumably having learned from his experiences during World War I, in which he had to leave all his paintings in Paris, Mondrian left Paris in September 1938, before the German invasion. He lived for two years his London where he became befriended with artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson. As the Germans increased pressure on England, Mondrian left London in September 1940, in the midst of the blitz.
On borrowed money, Mondrian arrived in New York in October 1940. Harry Holtzman had found and paid for his apartment and studio and introduced him to his friends. In New York Mondrian concluded his career with monumental works like "Broadway Boogie-Woogie" and (the unfinished) "Victory Boogie-Woogie"

This concludes this site's biography of Piet Mondrian. The next part represents this author's view on Piet Mondrian and his work.
Tribute to Piet MondrianOne can arbitrarily divide Piet Mondrian's work into two, the dividing line being his "Tree series". Most first class artists would have been satisfied going on with painting trees the way Mondrian did. I can't think of any other painting that conveys the soul of the Northern European landscape more deeply as his trees. Mondrian's "Red Tree", "Blue Tree" and "Grey Tree" are artistic masterpieces. Technically however, they look strangely insecure. With the "Red Tree" Mondrian seemed unable to render the foreground as convincingly as the rest. Two artists can arrive at the same point independently, but it seems likely that, like many artists of his generation, he was inspired by Vincent van Gogh while making the "Red Tree". A serious artist who tries to "paint like Van Gogh" is in trouble, however. Van Gogh is one the greatest "composers" in the history of the visual arts. Composing in this context, is meant to represent the ability to fit a great many details together in the best possible coherence. Mondrian was a very able landscape artist, but to paint in Van Gogh's expressive semi-abstract style is another matter. I hypothesize that Mondrian was overtaxed. The "Grey Tree" represents the limit (now in a cubist style) of how far Mondrian could go in creating a composition that is "spontaneously" painted, with semi-improvised brush-strokes.
It has been suggested that Mondrian pursued an abstract style to break with his domineering father, who was a draftsman and strict naturalist. One can always come up with some kind of Neo-Freudian speculation on another man's mind; it seems more sensible to look for an artistic explanation, which there is, in my opinion.
Mondrian was, not commercially or socially, but artistically ambitious. He wanted to paint like the great, but ran into the limits of his ability. Mondrian could draw very well, he was well-trained and his drawings do not should show any signs of insecurity. "The whims of nature" can be captured with a pencil on paper, but painting adds other dimensions, such as color and the texture of the paint. Whether his presumed inability to render nature as he wanted is responsible for his growing dislike of nature, that developed during his life is an open question. Abstract painting however, has the advantage that it's a more controlled environment. The abstract artist has a greater freedom to define his own artistic and technical parameters than the naturalist. Mondrian's earlier neo-plastic works are compositionally quite simple, with carefully arranged rectangles, but with few details. In New York however, he created his "Boogie Woogie" paintings, which to my mind are among the best compositions of the 20th century. And thus Mondrian achieved his goal: to become one of the greatest painters in history.
While he had stretched his talent to the limit 20 years earlier, in the subsequent period he cleverly and intelligently developed a style that enabled him to circumvent his limitations and turn his career into an absolute success.

Agostino Caracci

An Italian painter, engraver, and etcher, b. at Bologna, 16 August, 1557; d. at Parma, 22 March, 1602. The son of Antonio Carracci, a tailor, he was nephew of Lodovico and brother of Annibale. He began his art life as a goldsmith; but, urged by his uncle, the youth abandoned plastic for graphic art, and studied painting, first with Fontana, who had been Lodovico's master, and later with Passerotti. The fame of Correggio's masterpieces drew Agostino to Parma, and afterwards, accompanied by Annibale, he made a long sojourn in Venice, where he became a distinguished engraver under the celebrated Cort. In 1589 he and his brother returned to Bologna and with Lodovico started the "School of the Carracci" (see below, LODOVICO), in which he taught while working devotedly at painting. In his native town is his masterpiece, "The Last Communion of St. Jerome", a beautiful work, showing Correggio's influence. Agostino helped in the decoration of nearly every great palace in Bologna, and his poetic imagination was of great avail when with the matter-of- fact Annibale he assisted in the decoration of the Farnese Palace in Rome. He was a poet, and an interesting sonnet of his tells the students of the "Academy" what parts to choose from each school of painting and from the masters of the past in order to attain perfection. In 1600 Annibale andAgostino had a disagreement, and the latter left for Parma, where for the rest of his life he painted for the duke. Agostino was a master of engraving: he introduced what is called "the large style", and the lines of his plates were broadly and boldly laid. His influence in the art of engraving was felt far beyond the bounds of Italy, and his technic with the graver was widely imitated. His plates were freely and beautifully executed, there is an admirable expression on all his faces, and the execution of the hands and feet is marvellous. In addition to his masterpiece, mention may be made of: "St Francis receiving the Stigmata" (Vienna); "Triumph of Galatea" (London). Among his numerous plates the best and most celebrated are: "Antonio Carracci" (his father); "Tiziano Vocelli"; "The Repose in Egypt".