Jeff Koons Art Quotations

I think about my work every minute of the day.

I believe that my art gets across the point that I'm in this morality theater trying to help the underdog, and I'm speaking socially here, showing concern and making psychological and philosophical statements for the underdog.

Art's a very metaphysical activity. It's something that enriches the parameters of your life, the possibilities of being, and you touch transcendence and you change your life. And you want to change the life of others, too. That's why people are involved with art.

I believe that art has been a vehicle for me that's been about enlightenment and expanding my own parameters, to give me courage to exercise the freedom that I have in life.

I was trying to make art that my son could look on in the future and would realize I was thinking about him very much during these times... that he can look and see my dad's thinking about me, but to also embed in these things something that is bigger than all of us.

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done.

For me, art really starts with acceptance, self trust. Wherever you come to with art, its perfect. You dont have to come with anything. What you bring to something is the art. Thats where its found. Its found within you.

Art is about profundity. It's about connecting to everything that it means to be alive, but you have to act.

Art to me is a humanitarian act and I believe that there is a responsibility that art should somehow be able to effect mankind, to make the word a better place.

Art has this ability to allow you to connect back through history in the same way that biology does. I'm always looking for source material.

I love the gallery, the arena of representation. It's a commercial world, and morality is based generally around economics, and that's taking place in the art gallery.

I went to art school... but I worked at the Museum of Modern Art. I worked in fundraising at the information membership desk. I ended up, over a period of time, doubling the amount of membership revenue that came in through people entering the museum, so people would ask me to come and work for them.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

I spend much more time looking at art history and at different references to art than I do at actual objects.

I am very conscious of the viewer because that's where the art takes place. My work really strives to put the viewer in a certain kind of emotional state.

I always like to believe that my work is about the expansion of the possibilities of the viewer. So if you have a sense of a heightened situation where there's an excitement, a physical excitement and an intellectual stimulation, there's just this sense of expansion. Because that's where the art happens. Inside the viewer.

It's always wonderful to come to an event. I know how in my life art has come in and really changed it, so to give these children that opportunity just to come into contact with art.

I remember being an art student and going to the Whitney in 1974 to see the exhibition of Jim Nutt, the Chicago imagist. It was then I transferred to school in Chicago, all because of that show.

When I view the world, I don't think of my own work. I think of my hope that, through art, people can get a sense of the type of invisible fabric that holds us all together, that holds the world together.

Art is obsolete now. New technologies are taking over.

A lot of my work is about sales. And it was about being independent from the art market.

As an artist, I've always wanted to participate in the dialogue of art with other artists.

Art was something I could do better. It gave me a sense of self.

I know how art has come in and really changed my life, so to give these children that opportunity just to come into contact with art - that's wonderful.

I was always an artist. I was a broker to earn a living, but I was always thinking about my art.

I enjoy all mediums, and I have to say, music is the medium that first made me understand how powerful art could be.

Art helped give me confidence.

The moment we live in is a great time to make art. We have different technologies to play with, and we're left with the opportunity to focus on our work.

Nothing can touch me now - I'm Jeff Koons and my art can defend me !

I believe in advertisement and media completely. My art and my personal life are based in it. I think that the art world would probably be a tremendous reservoir for everybody involved in advertising.

It's wonderful to make a lot of money, to be able to take care of my family, to have the facilities I have and really support the people the studio's involved with. But at the end of the day I'm quite simple as an artist-it's really about the power of art.

The job of the artist is to make a gesture and really show people what their potential is. It’s not about the object, and it’s not about the image; it’s about the viewer. That's where the art happens.

Art is something that happens inside us. We look at things in the world, and we become excited by them. We understand our own possibilities of becoming. And that's what art is.

I'm making some of the greatest art being made now. It'll take the art world ten years to get around to it.

Ive always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. Thats what Ive always done.

The entertainment industry, the advertising industry have taken [the] tools from the art world and made themselves much more politically potent. We are really devastated and very impotent right now. A photographer just working for an advertising company has a platform to be much more politically effective in the world than an artist.