Explore Quotes by Jeff Koons

One of the reasons I work with technology the way I do is that I can really be assured that the vision I have from the outset is what will be at the end. And that that vision isn't altered through the process.

A lot of times, my work is looked at very much on the surface. It's very easy to just want to put something in a box - to say, 'Oh, since this work deals with surface desires at times, this is about consumerism.' And of course, the base of the work is... not about economics at all.

I'm in deep in everything, every moment of the day. I create the systems and oversee every aspect of the execution. Every mark on a sculpture and every brush-stroke on a painting is in a controlled situation, exactly as they'd be if I'd have done them myself.

When you have an idea for a work and when you've finished your model for it, for the artist it's almost complete, in a way. But then bringing it to the finish is really something you do for the audience. It is always exciting.

I think artists are always investigating how to have an economic, political platform. At one time, artists were supported by the Church. Then they were supported also by the state.

There are certain artworks that I respond to, artists that I respond to. It's an intellectual reaction but it's also a biological reaction. And the excitement that the work can generate - how it makes you feel about not only your intellectual possibilities but your physical possibilities in this world. How it feels to be alive!

Art's a very metaphysical activity. It's something that enriches the parameters of your life, the possibilities of being, and you touch transcendence and you change your life. And you want to change the life of others, too. That's why people are involved with art.

I try to make pieces that are durable. One of the reasons that I work in steel is durability.

I always like to believe that my work is about the expansion of the possibilities of the viewer. So if you have a sense of a heightened situation where there's an excitement, a physical excitement and an intellectual stimulation, there's just this sense of expansion. Because that's where the art happens. Inside the viewer.

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done.

I think art teaches us how to feel, what our parameters can be, what sensations can be like; it makes you more engaged with life.

Even in making objects, as soon as you start to get the feeling that some form of craft is coming into place, you realize that everything is wrong. Because craft is really just a fetish. It is wasted energy. It's about the object, some space which has nothing to do with the human.

When people make judgments they close all the possibility around them.

I remember being an art student and going to the Whitney in 1974 to see the exhibition of Jim Nutt, the Chicago imagist. It was then I transferred to school in Chicago, all because of that show.

The first piece I ever collected was a Roy Lichtenstein: a sculpture called 'Surrealist Head II'. There was a waiting list. I remember Steve Martin wanted one, and I wanted one. I got the 'Surrealist Head', and I was thrilled.

For me, art really starts with acceptance, self trust. Wherever you come to with art, it's perfect. You don't have to come with anything. What you bring to something is the art. That's where it's found. It's found within you.

I was trying to make art that my son could look on in the future and would realize I was thinking about him very much during these times... that he can look and see my dad's thinking about me, but to also embed in these things something that is bigger than all of us.

I believe that art has been a vehicle for me that's been about enlightenment and expanding my own parameters, to give me courage to exercise the freedom that I have in life.

I try to educate people about materialism through my work. I try to show them real visual luxury.

I realised that people respond to banal things. They don't accept their own history, not participating in acceptance within their own being.

I would think that to people like my father, and the people of his generation, Popeye is like a male priapist. So if you think in ancient terms, he would have a harem, a symbol of male energy.