Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Side by Side: The Interview

They were once the enfant terrible of the art world,

whose work had the power to cause shock and outrage

as well as to delight.

Now, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst are giants of Modern Art,

their work sells for millions.

And they've come together at Damien Hirst's new gallery

in Newport Street in London's Vauxhall

for a free exhibition of Jeff Koons' art.

# Let's go! #

It's a rare opportunity to see Koons' work spanning more than

four decades, from the ready-made to the surreal,

from the childlike to the pornographic.

It's a feast for the eyes and all the senses.

It's the first show of Jeff Koons' work in this country since 2009

and it comes from Damien Hirst's own collection.

The two artists collaborated closely on the show.

Damien Hirst had 36 of Jeff Koons' works,

Jeff Koons had a cardboard model of the gallery in New York.

This was the model they used here in the Newport Gallery

and together they installed the show.

So Jeff Koons has an idea of what to expect,

but this is the moment when he sees it for the first time.

Wow.

In the first gallery are some of his early ready-made works,

or everyday objects presented as art.

Damien, this looks amazing. It looks really amazing.

Wow.

Wow, let me give you a hug.

-There we go.

-Thank YOU.

So, tell us about this, because this goes right back.

These are inflatable flowers from 1978.

I remember they would come in a package

and it would say, "For modern home decor."

And I would just go to the hardware store

and buy pre-cut glass mirrors, they were 12-inch square,

and I would set them down and what I enjoyed so much was, you know,

when you move, the abstraction changes.

And so I just love the simplicity of that

and, you know, the sexual quality of that reflection.

I mean, it's enhanced, it's charged-up.

In his ready-made pieces,

Koons took inspiration from the artist Marcel Duchamp,

who shocked the world a century ago by making a urinal a work of art.

The star of Koons' series called The New

was the common-or-garden vacuum cleaner.

Did this come directly from your interest in Duchamp and the ready-made?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, to try to show the ready-made in a manner that

hopefully was adding something.

How important is it they're completely pristine?

Well, the most important thing is that they're never used.

You know, their case is clean, and what was important to me

was that they're new Hoovers, and so the ad, like, "Rooomy!"

You know, "Toyota, new family Camry."

It's about newness.

I also think that it's interesting using the vacuum cleaners,

because in the States, in America, at least, like, in the '50s,

the door-to-door salesman, he would sell Hoovers.

-And they were all Hoovers!

-They were Hoovers.

I used to go door-to-door selling gift-wrapping paper,

chocolates, but this interaction with people, I mean, you know,

developing a context with the community or larger social group.

So then you come on and then THIS piece.

-Which was your first Hoover that you bought?

-That was the first piece, I think.

So this is not a hoover, this is a shampooer?

Yeah, well, it's still a hoover, because it's made by Hoover.

-Hoover shampooer.

-Hoover Shampooer.

But even looking at this, that kind of has, like,

an Egyptian, an Etruscan type of quality.

It's laid out almost like in a funerary-type manner.

Yeah, the reason why I liked them when I first bought one

was because they look like immortality.

This caused an argument with artists when you talked about your work

and you invest in this work, the idea, you know, Etruscan, Egyptian

and so forth, but the viewer doesn't have the benefit of your thought.

-Does that matter?

-Um... But they do. Yeah, they do.

It's there in their subconscious manners, it's all metaphor.

They may not have the exact words...

Yeah, if somebody looks at it and says, "I don't know why I like it, but I do,"

it's probably because of all the work that Jeff's put into

making it and presenting it in that way, with everything else taken away.

One of the pieces in the exhibition which

I find the most affecting is the idea that you've taken a life vest

and you've cast it so beautifully in bronze,

but anyone that puts on this and goes into the sea...

..doesn't survive.

Yeah. I mean, if you would leave that on, it would take you under.

Or even, like, the snorkel.

The snorkel's the first idea that I had for casting an object.

But now seeing it, because I've never seen this before,

what is extraordinary, the perfection of it is amazing,

down to the stitching that would have existed on the original canvas.

When I look at this, I think of, like, a Venus of Willendorf,

it's all kind of feminine form here.

You know it's a voluptuous... It's a... It's feminine form.

So these have now become one of your biggest, most iconic works.

In 2013, Koons broke the record for the most expensive work

by a living artist sold at auction.

A sculpture from the same series as this one, the Balloon Monkey,

fetched 58 million.

'It looks like it's filled with air, but actually,

'it's made of stainless steel.'

It's such a great colour.

I think it's my favourite colour of all the inflatable animals.

It feels like you couldn't really do the show without it.

And it's as if you built this room for it. It's like that.

I love the way the tail goes off to the right

and the wall is kind of sloped off to the right as well.

And this again is utterly perfect.

-Not a blemish on it.

-Yeah, I've got no idea how you achieve that,

because if I get people to polish things, there's always a kind of

little ripple in the reflection, because the reflection's so pure.

We would white-light scan these, but we would also take CAT scans

of the model, so that we were able to know exactly

what the folds were like.

And so, you know, that's the basis of these objects.

You know that the knot is exactly like that.

That's the idea of a knot.

That's what the knot was like.

You know, these folds, these aren't just kind of the idea

of what happens when you make a balloon monkey...

-The actual...

-These are the folds.

-I feel like the flies in A Bug's Life. You know, that movie?

-Yes.

They say, "Don't look at the light."

"I can't help it. It's so beautiful!"

LAUGHTER

One room is not for the faint-hearted.

When did you get these pieces, Damien?

About six or seven years ago.

While a huge bowl of eggs symbolises creation and birth,

the other works here are shockingly explicit.

They're from a series from the early '90s called Made in Heaven,

starring Ilona Staller, better known by her porn star name, Cicciolina.

# Ah, love to love you, baby... #

When I first saw it, I was like, "He's lost it."

I just thought, "That's not art. He's completely, completely lost it."

It was like... I didn't like them.

I just thought, "Why would you want to go that far?" kind of thing.

And then afterwards, it was a couple of years later,

I was like, "Oh, my God! No, I love them."

They were my favourite pieces of Jeff's.

I kind of imagined that when you did them, maybe you were...

Maybe you had to psych yourself up to get to that point,

which I always admired.

But if it was an expression of love and the love was already there,

-then was it easier to do?

-Er, the love happened.

I mean, so originally it was an idea, because the Whitney Museum

asked me if I wanted to make a work about media.

So I thought, "I'll add a star on my shoulder,"

and the easiest way to get in film would be porn.

And so I thought, "I'll hire that Italian woman that

"I used references of in my Banality show."

I ended up using one of her dresses in a piece called Fait d'Hiver.

"And I'll make it like we're making a movie and I'll call it

"Made In Heaven starring Jeff Koons and Cicciolina."

So that's how it came about and we started flirting,

and ended up becoming something more than just the idea of this film.

But do you think they became more explicit than even you had

imagined because there was a relationship?

Er...yes. I mean, I thought I was just going to make this billboard.

-No billboard there!

-But as...

But when we started flirting,

then I decided that actually I could take this further.

# Ah, love to love you, baby... #

Do you think now...

because things have moved on and it was a difficult period

in your life, but do you reflect on these differently now?

No. You know, I accepted my ex-wife's past.

I accepted her background.

I fell in love with her for who she was, exactly the person,

but it ended up it did not work out, so it was really about acceptance.

This is only the second exhibition at Hirst's wonderful new gallery.

He's one of Britain's most successful artists,

but he's also been a passionate curator since his student days.

-You know, Damien, what a range of works you have.

-I know!

To come from downstairs and The New and the Monkey

and the Made In Heaven, to be here with the Kiepenkerl.

This was a really transformative piece

and when I made the Kiepenkerl it was 1987.

I was asked to be in an exhibition in Munster and I saw in the town

square they had this sculpture of the Kiepenkerl in bronze.

And I thought, "I'll recast that. I'll put it in stainless steel."

And as he reflected that he met the needs of an agrarian culture...

I mean, this is a man coming to market with a kip filled with

eggs, potatoes, pigeons.

He has tobacco, pear...

This idea of self-reliance.

Today, we have our kind of economic needs as a type of security

met different ways and that by having it in this reflective

stainless steel mirrored surface, it reflected more

the transcendent state of feeling like our needs were met.

So, it's great to see that you have Kiepenkerl.

And then you've got the Jim Beam series.

It's a kind of luxury item though, isn't it?

-And yet stainless steel is not.

-It's referencing luxury items.

This is the first time I ever worked in stainless steel.

So I was walking down Fifth Avenue in New York and I looked

in a liquor store window and they had the Jim Beam JB Turner train.

They had, you know, this engine and the train cars lined up

and I thought, "Wow! What a great object to work with."

And it transformed.

I put it in stainless steel, bring it to a high-mirror polish

so it will be intoxicating,

but what's important is how to transform it and maintain its soul.

And its soul is that it's a fifth of Jim Beam bourbon, or

if you slide back the door, right there is the neck of the bottle.

You know, with this piece here, the Italian lady,

I remember seeing this.

This was the one in the Saatchi Gallery, the actual one,

and I remember seeing the book on it when I first saw the show,

under there, and I remember being totally confused by that.

-This is a book that says, "Manzoni here."

-Yeah.

This is Lucia and Lucia is one of the main figures in

Manzoni's writing and this is called Italian Woman,

but it's very bourgeois-looking.

Some of Koon's most celebrated pieces -

basketballs floating in perfect equilibrium in a glass tank -

are echoed by Hirst's most famous works,

his dead creatures in formaldehyde.

Had you made any vitrine pieces before you saw this?

What date was this? I don't think so.

This would be '85.

What I'd been... Before I came to London,

I'd been in the Anatomy Museum in Leeds where they had all

the objects in formaldehyde in like a museum section.

What I'd been doing is drawing from those, like medical students

trying to sort of understand anatomy for life drawing.

But then, when I started to see Jeff's work, it reminded me

of those things and I thought, "Oh, my God!

"I shouldn't be doing that. I should be taking it directly,"

because that's what Jeff was doing.

It's kind of interesting that one artist contributes

so directly to another artist's work.

That's what all art does.

At Goldsmith's they taught us, "Don't borrow ideas, steal them."

LAUGHTER

Gallery Five has some of Koons' more recent works.

It's playful yet disturbing at the same time.

The lobster has more than a passing resemblance to

a master of Surrealism.

When I was younger, 18 or 19, my mother informed me

that Dali had lived half the year in New York.

So I found out he stayed at the St Regis hotel.

So I called up the hotel and I told him that I was a fan

and I would love to meet him.

And he said, "Come to New York next weekend.

"I'll meet you in the lobby of the hotel at 12 o'clock."

And I went there and there he was.

He had his buffalo fur coat on and his diamond tie tag,

the silver cane and he posed for some photographs.

He put his moustache up.

I remember I was young and I was kind of jiggling my camera around.

I was nervous and he said, "Come on, kid. I can't hold this all day."

So, it's nice to kind of remember that.

So, it has aspects of Dali, but it's also LHOOQ

with Marcel Duchamp drawing on the Mona Lisa.

And, again, look like they're blown up with air, but they're not.

-No, they're aluminium.

-Is also more acrobatic, it seems.

That's right, but there's something interesting that's very, very,

masculine, but at the same time,

there's something very feminine and the tail...

It almost looks like a type of feather fan that maybe

a stripper would use.

And if you look, these could also be fallopian tubes,

this could be womblike. This could be kind of vaginal lips.

It kind of goes back and forth from masculine and feminine.

The collection here is one of the biggest of Jeff Koons' work

in the world and represents most of his career.

-I liked this view.

-This is great.

-Yes.

For Damien Hirst,

the show is the climax of a passion that goes back 30 years.

Damien, what age where you...?

Can you remember exactly when and where you saw Jeff's work at first?

Erm, I think in magazines to start with, when I was a student.

So early '80s, '85, and then when I saw it for real, it was in the

Saatchi Gallery in the New York Art Now show,

which was, I think, '86, '87.

And then, you know, my tutors didn't like it and I absolutely loved it.

Your tutors didn't like it?

Well, they were sort of behind everything and then with the New

York Art Now show, they just went, "That's not art," and I was, like...

I loved it even more because it was, like, totally punk.

It was against what my tutors believed and everything,

so it was, like... And so simple and easy.

And here you are and did you ever think that, actually, you would

end up as being one of Jeff Koon's major collectors in the world?

Never. You know, it's like...

I remember looking at the works at the time and not...

I mean, you could never possess anything like that,

but also to be in a position where you can...

I mean, I've got Jeff's work in my house at home and it's like, you know...

To think I've got a piece by the TV and I often find myself

not looking at the TV and then looking at the piece.

It kind of does more than the TV most of the time.

So, when were you first aware of Damien's work?

We were in exhibition together in Germany.

-This would have been around 1991, '92.

-It was fairly early, wasn't it?

-When you did the puppy.

-Yeah, yeah.

-A giant puppy made out of flowers.

-So we spent time together.

Our families hung out. So Damien met my father.

I think your mother was there as well, wasn't she?

Yeah, my mum was there and I know Damien's mother.

So it was wonderful that we spent time together in this small

German little city and that's where we befriended each other.

And when you started collecting Jeff's work, it occurs to me

that you were developing as an artist as Jeff was still

developing as an artist.

Was that one of the reasons that it was someone you wanted to collect?

I just... I'd been selling work

and I had quite a lot of money coming in suddenly,

and I thought I could justify making this kind of money

if I was buying these things that I'd always loved.

I remember the first piece I bought from Jeff was that single

Hoover downstairs and I said to Larry Gagosian,

who has a gallery in New York, "How much is that?"

And he said, "It's 60,000," or something.

I remember I said to him, "Will it go up in value?"

And he went, "If you buy it for that reason, don't buy it!"

And I thought, "Wow! What do you mean?" Then I did buy it in the end.

So, Damien, tell me, you have this space,

you decide that you would show Jeff's work.

So, why was it important to put this exhibition together?

I always had an idea that I'd like to do a show of Jeff's work,

because I think...

In my work, I have lots of different things that I do

and Jeff is similar like that, so he's a difficult artist to collect.

You think you want one of everything and it becomes quite a commitment.

But I always thought I'd love to have enough

to do a really great show. I think I've managed.

There are a few pieces that I haven't got, which I never...

What I always wanted was one of the wooden pieces and

one of the ceramic pieces from one of...

A ceramic from Banality?

Yeah, I never managed to get one of those,

but I don't think it feels like anything is missing.

I didn't feel that anything was missing.

It feels absolutely complete from entering with the first

inflatable flowers to, you know, ending here with an elephant.

You see your life flashing before you.

I see a creative life and, you know, working with objects,

working with metaphor and what I really find important in this

exhibition is the friendship with Damien.

I mean, that is what is really meaningful to me,

that Damien would collect my work and just this interaction.

That's really what I walk away with.

But, in life, when we're making objects, you know, it's metaphor

for how we can make our lives better, how we can accept ourselves

more clearly and how we can go out in the world

and we can accept other people and we can really enrich our lives.

I mean, I think with Jeff's work, when he chose that great title

for his series of works, Celebration, which is a great title,

I was a bit jealous when you got that title because it's like...

I'm a bit more prone to darkness here and there,

but I think art in itself, even if you're making something negative,

it's a positive force.

It is very difficult for anyone to come in here

and not absolutely love it.

You know, it's like...

Whenever you see kids in a Koons exhibition, they just... Wow!

They're just running around loving it.

Right now, though, we're sitting in front of Play-Doh,

one of your biggest and, indeed, heaviest works that Damien has.

I want to spend a little time talking about that.

-Why did you buy this piece of work?

-When I saw it, it was like...

It seems to be the basis of all art.

I've got kids myself and we've played with Play-Doh.

It just sort of seemed to say everything.

You know, I have a young son and he made a mound of Play-Doh

and I was looking in a different direction and he said, "Dad,"

and I turned and I looked at him,

and he had the mound right here and he went, "Voila!"

LAUGHTER

That was the beginning of it, that "Voila!"

It reminds me of that piece in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind,

when he makes that thing in his living room

and it's, like, just a shape and he's obsessed with it. You know...

To make a small one, it doesn't really do anything, but then to

make it that size, it's like right in your face and you can't deny it.

It seems to me that you're a very optimistic person

in an often pessimistic world.

I think the works have a dark side, too.

I mean, if I look at the elephant over there, it's bright,

it's cheerful, but it also has some darkness to it.

To have a dialogue about optimism, you have to have the other side.

I've had arguments with people about Jeff's work

and I often get onto the fact that it's about death,

but I don't know if that's my reading of it or whatever.

I think another really important thing is it's about America.

The most amazing portrait of America. The whole of Jeff's work.

That's interesting because, of course, you were very much

schooled in the European tradition

and also in antiquity, but yet your work is determinedly American.

The things that I responded to in my life, you know,

I've been able to hold dear.

I enjoyed driving down the road - I'm from rural Pennsylvania,

I still have a home there.

I'll drive down the road and I'll see a gazing ball in a yard.

That's still one of the most exciting experiences.

My whole family will drive by and all my kids are yelling,

"Gazing ball! Gazing ball!" And we'll point these things out.

But, you know, there are wonderful things around us all the time.

Of course, we don't have gazing balls here

and it strikes me that we don't have that reflective nature.

I think we were all raised not to look at ourselves in many ways

and maybe that's a different aspect of American culture.

It is actually OK to celebrate yourself more than it was here.

I mean, for me, the gazing ball, it's a GPS system

and, you know, the mind is always rewarding you.

It always wants to know where you are within the universe.

And it's a heightening of the senses.

You look and you have the light reflecting.

I can feel my fingertips tingle.

To me, it's affirmation, it's excitement of the senses.

It's biology.

And, at the same time, it can take you into very ephemeral,

ethereal thought and into ideas.

So that's another form of the eternal.

You spoke earlier, though, about the fact that your work perhaps

seems more optimistic than Damien's.

You said your work seems darker and I wonder,

the diamond skull to me seems the ultimate dark object.

I don't know.

It's semantics, isn't it?

Art is always optimistic even if it is art about death or life.

I had Elephant on my desk and when it arrived,

I remember looking at it and thinking, "Oh, my God!"

It's got that same quality that the diamond skull has

and it looks totally hopeful and optimistic, shiny and bright.

Yet it also looks like you could pop it with a pin.

And I remember thinking, "My God!

"I wish I could make a diamond skull that you could pop with a pin."

That's it...

And also it's made of a material that, you know,

is lasting 6,000 years and counting.

The casting is like a 6,000-year-old process. So it covers everything.

But what do you see in each other?

I suppose all the artists that I love have something that I don't.

What I love about your work, or Jeff as well,

is that he's, like, contemporary.

He is alive today and it's like you kind of admire people from afar,

but it's like...

It's totally inspirational to see that somebody living today

can make art that's on a par with all those dead guys who,

when you were young, you look at and you think...

I mean, whenever I think about my work as well,

I know all my own problems and weaknesses and doubts.

You know, you go through them all to end up with good work.

Whereas, when I look at your work, I can't see any of it and I think...

I have to remind myself that you're getting this finished,

this beautiful, finished product.

-Tell him that you're doubtful sometimes!

-Yeah, yeah.

You know, with Damien's work,

what I always enjoy about Damien's work is its power.

I mean, it's really visually... There is a strength there.

It's always very confrontational in its power.

The type of images, objects, things that are brought together

are extremely well thought out, constructed.

There is a natural quality about it that, even though there are kind of

desperate and different things, they really unify themselves so well.

It's just an amazing intellect and thought.

I mean, this idea of a discussion about power and control

and giving up control.

I think that it's extremely strong in Damien's work.

Look at the butterflies that are painted into the surface.

I mean, it's a profound discourse.

You both have attracted a lot of attention

because of the vast amount of money that your art achieves.

Do you think in a way that sometimes obscures your art?

I kind of think that money can obscure things,

especially in England.

I think a lot of people think artists need to be poor,

or that you can't have a focus of money.

When I did my auction and made all that money,

it changed everything for me.

It was made in such a short period of time.

I suddenly noticed that businessmen started taking me seriously.

And there are audiences everywhere and audiences change.

Money is a huge part of our life.

I've always thought it's as important as love or death.

Something to come to terms with, something to understand.

It's a key and it's something you need to respect.

But I definitely don't think it should be considered a dirty word.

And once you have made the art and someone has bought it,

does it matter to you that people might buy your art

as a commodity rather than as something they love?

I was always brought up to be self-reliant

and so, I would sell drinks on golf courses,

maybe the ninth hole, as a way to make money.

I went door to door selling gift-wrapping paper and chocolates.

And I enjoy the interaction with people,

to be part of a dialogue with people like Warhol and Dali,

Picabia, Picasso, you know, Manet, Leonardo.

Just to be in a dialogue, a group. Here, to be a group with Damien.

We're involved in a dialogue.

It's an international discourse and there are hundreds of thousands

of other people that we're connected to and we're having

a dialogue about life and talking about art and how it's changed.

It's changed my life.

It's made my life vaster than it ever would have been

if I didn't get involved in this dialogue.

And that people are supportive to that ongoing dialogue

hopefully is just a symbol that... contributing in some manner.

The Jeff Koons: Now show at the Newport Street Gallery

in London runs through until the 16th October and entry is free.

# He has come to bring you things that make you happy

# A gigantic puppy made of living flowers

# A balloon dog like a helium Brancusi

# And rocking Rococonary guitars

# Basketballs suspended in Bavaria

# Usher in the fat, contented pig

# Whose every hair is hand-carved by Italian master craftsman

# A porcelain Michael Jackson

# And a vacuum cleaner stands amongst the stars. #