hHis hands-off approach to the production of his famous balloon dogs and stainless steel rabbits has been criticized in the past, but Jeff Koons, the world’s most expensive artist, has drawn a red line: “Not me, on my own basis.” work: I will look for AI to develop my work.”
The potential and risks of artificial intelligence is perhaps the hottest topic in the art world, with deep learning models now able to replicate styles and produce unique compositions on demand.
It appears to be a heaven-sent breakthrough for Koons, who spoke to The Guardian at the launch of Reflections, a joint exhibition of his works alongside those of Pablo Picasso at the Alhambra in Granada. Koons’ reliance on teams of craftsmen and cutting-edge technology to make his pieces led Collector magazine last year to ask, “Is Jeff Koons a real artist?”
Exploiting technological advances is what it does. Five years ago, the American’s highly polished stainless steel Rabbit, made through intense mechanical work to imitate the look and material of a balloon, sold for a record $91 million (£72.5 million). . His previous bestseller, the 10-foot-tall steel Balloon Dog, sold for $58 million in 2013. A SpaceX rocket lifted 125 of his miniature lunar sculptures from Earth’s orbit in February, to become the first works of art authorized on the Moon.
for his Staring balls seriesin which masterpieces were reproduced but with a large blue crystal ball on a shelf, he ordered 350 balls before choosing the 35 best. He is also an innovator. “There are certain projects I’m thinking about,” he revealed. “I have a wonderful dialogue with people who are involved in the core of AI development.”
But it seems likely that AI will remain on the periphery of what he does. “I enjoy where the core of my work comes from: my reflection on everything that has any meaning to me,” he said. “Right now I don’t work directly with AI other than to produce options. Here is this table: Could you see this table in a forest? And then could I see this shape in, you know, a marble? I would like to see it in reflected steel. Only in that scenario. I have been using AI as a tool, not as an agent.
“Now, people talk a lot about AI at the moment, about being an agent in the sense that it has its own thoughts, its own ability to create, and I’m sure at some point I’ll move in that direction. direction in some way, but I am very immersed right now in biology.”
He added: “I once met a Nobel Prize winner and we were talking about life and he said, ‘You know, life is just an animated chemical chain reaction.’ And I thought it was so beautiful that I suddenly felt like I really understood what I was experiencing, that it’s just an illusion, that it’s just the animation.
“But I believe a lot in this process, this biological process and the senses: the sense of sight, touch and feeling… I don’t want to be lazy in the back seat.”
A say no to AI movement has emerged in recent months, with advocates expressing particular concern about image generators that steal artwork and artistic styles from existing artists without their permission and without credit. Others warn that AI could replace humans as creators.
Koons, a month shy of turning 70, said he wasn’t too worried. The invention of photography in the 19th century was seen by some as the antithesis of an artist, but rather than replacing painting, it led to a move away from realism towards abstraction.
“I think if AI can become that kind of agent, we will be able to understand it and work with it, in some way, to benefit ourselves,” he said. “Or it will make us look at our senses, which are probably relatively inactive. We like to think that we are using our senses to the best of their ability, but we have probably become lazy to some extent and we can only improve that.
“Throughout history, we have always faced technologies that have been enlightening and very, very powerful, and they change the moment we live in and our future. But I accept it.”
Koons spoke in an anteroom inside the eighth wonder of the world, the Alhambra complex, where three of his pieces are exhibited: Three Graces, Gazing Ball (Intervention by David de las Sabinas) and Gazing Ball (Standing Woman). until March 16 along with Picasso’s hand-drawn The Three Graces of 1923 and his Helmeted Head of 1933, and the palace’s own Renaissance collection.
With an estimated fortune of $400 million, Koons is said to be the richest living artist in the world. He is a Picasso collector and two of his favorites are displayed in the library and billiard room of his 21,726-square-foot New York mansion.
“There have been times in my life where, you know, there has been a kind of abundance, and you know, coming from art, if I had abundance, I would acquire some pieces,” he said.
Impeccably dressed in a suit, tie and blue sneakers, and always polite, Koons had traveled to the Alhambra with his wife, Justine, an artist and mother of six of their eight children, ages 14 to 49, for the exhibition. organized by the Picasso Málaga Museum in the Palace of Carlos V of the Alhambra.
It had taken two days to move Koons’s 1.8-ton reflective Three Graces a few hundred meters to a niche in the palace’s inner circular courtyard and another day to unpack them from their box and place them on a 1.2-ton pedestal. tons. The initial plan to place the giant work alongside the others in a first-floor room had to be abandoned due to its weight, but Koons was delighted with the somewhat accidental result.
He said: “In this exhibition we really have three elements: we have Picasso, we have myself and we have the museum collection. And inside the room there are like three different elements, but when you add them, you create practically anything. They just don’t add up to three. And that is the creative capacity that biology gives us, this ability to get more out of something. And so far, AI hasn’t done that.”