The persona Koons had chosen to come packaged in was, like the work that has made him one of America’s most influential living artists, fugitive and particularly difficult to read. The neat business suit, the clubman’s tie and the salt-and-pepper brush-cut hair suggested both the head buyer in the men’s apparel department at Bloomingdale’s and a retired astronaut still out of joint with life on Earth.
“I believe in advertisement and media completely,” Koons has said. “My art and personal life are based on it.” In an interview many years ago he described his idea of pleasure: dining with a group of friends, he recalled, he was moved to propose a toast. How lucky he was, he announced, to be in a beautiful place, surrounded by people he liked … As he stood there, he remembered, in a state of bliss, it was like being in an advertisement.
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