The Koonsversation

In 2012, designer Lisa Perry launched a collection inspired by artist Jeff Koons. In addition to the Koons, Perry has created collections inspired by artists Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Indiana. A few pieces from the collection are still available, such as a shirt with Koons' 2003 Popeye and bangles with images from Monkey Train (Birds) of 2007 and Loopy of 1999.

Event producer Van Wyck & Van Wyck created a colorful griffin topiary for Christie's Green Auction, inspired by Koons' Puppy and Split-Rocker.

Jeff Koons has won. The reigning artist-king its proud court jester the poster child for art-world excess a bland Mitt Romney Teletubby a mysterious force of nature the perma-smiling master of high art and low as freakish as Andy Warhol: complicated, bizarre, thrilling, alien, benevolent, terrifying, goofy always-immaculate Is his factory of art makers really that different from Buzzfeed? Gleaming in the ghost-light of fluorescent tubes, shiny new Hoovers in pristine, sealed acrylic cases anthropomorphized and fetishized, odes to domesticity, hygiene and American assembly lines, rendering consumerism into something deeply libidinous. Hyper-anal-retentive Pop collages peppered with cartoon creatures and vulvas, miraculous constructions in which basketballs float in minutely calibrated salt water Shellacked paintings of flying sandwiches and grinning monkeys, paint, dessert and psychedelic poop Something fantastic, something disastrous They don't even revile; they merely recede. Silliness, shininess, filled with flops, with waxed chest and having anal sex Buoyant devices that will sink you, a creepy fecundity suggestive of erupting skin, simmering mud or sewage, a pietà-inspired homage to the King of Pop and his favorite monkey, a ridiculous marble sculpture depicting a bejeweled and barechested Staller The perfect Kardashian wedding centerpiece. Jeff Koons poses next to a pig, grinning Jeff Koons wears a luxurious bathrobe Jeff Koons is served cake by half-naked women Jeff Koons stands in front of a room full of children spelling out the word banality on a chalkboard His mystifying persona is perhaps his most enduring artwork He irritates most when he insists he has no desire to irritate. Only a cynic could see cynicism in this cosmically, freakishly sincere true believer He loves childhood, and sex He wants to be your Norman Rockwell, your life coach and your gym buddy. The hype has been endless for this. The oligarchical collectors of our age, we know, do not care They like their art instantly recognisable easily graspable unchallenging and shiny. Little more than a Gagosian showroom High-production art that sells like crystal meth — the readymade crossed with greed, money, creepy beauty, and the ugliness of our culture, reek[ing] of Gilded Age excess, art star hubris the ever-widening inequality gap thoughts, however unformed, about who culture is aimed at and how desire is constructed. That ball is made for you; look in it, and you see yourself. Join the idolaters and take another selfie in the distorted reflection of Koons's mirrored objects There is a funereal air about this exhibition The God Hercules, a Belvedere torso, and a pimped-out mailbox, each with a single blue gazing ball, an amorous Pink Panther a pig flanked by angels a London bobby befriending a goofy bear Bubbles, still affronts and generates an agreeable queasiness. There's something truly cruel in his sculptures' indifference to any audience desire for profundity Koons himself, smiling too broadly to see the culture he propitiates collapse around him Pity his army of studio assistants “You’re a killer of art, you’re a killer of beauty ... you’re even a killer of laughter.” His universal shtick is an illusion, the most potent and inventive artist of this mad, frothy era That era will come to an end.