one of a number of American artists to emerge in the 1980s with an aesthetic devoted to the decade's pervasive consumer culture. Koons used his work to reflect the commercial systems of the modern world.
His vacuum cleaners encased in perspex (1980–81; see 1993 exh. cat., pls 5–9) were classified as monuments to sterility. His immaculate replicas of domestic products, advertisements, kitsch toys and models exercised an enthusiastic endorsement of unlimited consumption, unlike the veiled criticism of some work of the first generation of Pop artists. Koons perceived Western civilization as a driven society, flattered by narcissistic images and with a voracious appetite for glamorous commodities.
Koons managed to shock the art world with one audacious work after another, from displaying commercial vacuum cleaners and basketballs as his own art to making porcelain reproductions of kitsch objects to showing homemade pornography.
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