Headline February 19, 2017/ ''' THE STUDENT ARTIST '''

''' THE STUDENT ARTIST '''

BACK HERE AT *PROUD PAKISTAN*  -the government of Punjab has just this very day announced :  'Chief Minister Talent Programme'  in Music and Painting.

Nothing can be more timely, and more unique. The World Students Society appreciates and admires this step and development, and wishes all, every success.

EQUILIBRIUM ESTABLISHED KOONS as a promising young artist, and he sold several sculptures. ''At a loss,'' he notes.

''You know, just to break in. But I thought if I kept people involved with my work, it would eventually even itself out.'' 

He then produced increasingly ambitious and exuberant pieces, including Rabbit, a 1986 mirrored stainless steel replica of a rabbit inflatable toy and 1998 gilded porcelain statue of  Michael Jackson  cuddling his  pet chimpanzee Bubbles.

Rabbit remains among Koons most admired works, while Michael Jackson and Bubbles introduced him to the tabloids. 

''One of the fascinating things about Jeff is that he works on many different levels,'' says Julia Peyton -Jones,  co-director of  Serpentine Galleries in London where he staged a solo show in 2009.

''He deals with the everyday  -puppies, balloons, Michael Jackson,  -things everybody understands. This makes his work appealing to people who know about art, while the art cognoscenti can read it in a very nuanced and sophisticated way.''

In 1989, Koons began a new project, Made in Heaven, consisting of sexually explicit sculptures, paintings and billboards of him with IIona Staller, an Italian porn star known as La Cicciolina, whom he had pursued after seeing her in a magazine.

Even previously loyal art critics were appalled, although the tabloids were delighted, Koons married Staller in 1991 in Budapest, and they lived in Munich before moving to New York, where their son Ludwig was born in 1992.

It was in Germany that he made Puppy, a work so simple, spectacular, and endearing that even his hardest critics struggle to dislike it. 

But he and Staller separated in 1993. Koons nearly bankrupted himself in a custody battle for Ludwig, while struggling to complete the  Celebration series, a collection of archetypal works inspired by a calendar year.

By the late Nineties,  Collection  was still unfinished, Koons faced financial ruin and risked being dismissed as a relic of the art world's Eighties excesses.

The interesting point came in 2000  when Puppy was exhibited at the Rockfeller Center in New York, reminding the art world of how appealing his work could be. 

The following year Michael Jackson and Bubbles sold for $5.6 million at auction, cementing his bankability among collectors.

Koons had also stabilised his private life. His daughter was able to find Koons in New York. Shannon, now 40, continues stay close to Koons. Koons also married Justine Wheeler, a studio assistant, who had stood by him throughout his financial woes.

Koons then made a steady stream of pieces in which he explored more of his passions, from comic-book characters such as Popeye and the Incredible Hulk, to Old Master painting and classical statuary, in addition to making mirror-polished stainless steel replicas of inflatables in the shapes of lobsters, monkeys, hearts and whatever else took his fancy.

Technically his work has become ever more elaborate. Koons is renowned for working with the most accomplished fabricators and artisans in the fields, from Los Angeles balloons artists, to the Louvre Museum's plaster workshop.

He insists on such high standards that he destroys completed works that, he feels, have failed to meet them. 

''Jeff has an extreme sense of the craft,'' notes Carig-Martin. ''His work is an amazing combination of apparently banal imagery and super-craftsmanship. That's why I've never believed that he is motivated by money. An artist who is would cut corners. he does the opposite.''

Many of his assistants  working at the banks of computers in Koons' studio, flanked by tables laden with inflatable flowers and whiteboards with ''3D Tasks'', are wrestling with production logistics. 

Others preparing for upcoming exhibitions, like The Artist, a group show featuring Koons that opened at the Royal Academy's in Stockholm in February, and public art projects, such as Train, a proposal to suspend a replica 1943 Baldwin 2900 steam locomotive from a 16ft crane, that he began in 2003.

Originally, the LA County Museum of Art planned to commission and exhibit Train, but the process was so arduous that it now seems likelier to be installed beside the High Line in New York.

Most of Koons assistants are young artists, whose income from his studio subsidises their own work, just as the money he made at MoMA and on Wall Street supported him, but one colleague has been with him for than 25 years    -studio manager, Gary McCraw.

''It's fascinating to observe  Jeff and Gary's relationship, because they're both so wholeheartedly committed to making the art that it draws you in, too,'' says Peyton-Jones.         

''When you work with them there is a  'Three Musketeers' sense of  'all for one, one for all.''

The Honour and Serving of the latest ''Operational Research'' on Life and great Artists, continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing forward. And see you on the following one.

With respectful dedication to all the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society and Twitter...!E-WOW!  -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Since 2011 '''

Good Night and God Bless

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