Jeff Koons – Balloon Monkey (Orange). UPDATE: IT MADE $25,925,000.
A year after Jeff Koons’ Balloon Dog (Orange) set the world auction record for any living artist Christie’s will offer Balloon Monkey (Orange) in New York in November. The monumental stainless steel sculpture with its impressive scale, fluid line, and immaculate mirror-like surfaces, will be one of the highlights of the November evening sale of Post War and Contemporary Art on November 12. New Yorkers are in for a treat as the 20 foot long sculpture will be presented at the entrance to Christie’s at 20 Rockefeller Plaza for six weeks before being sold. The auction will follow on the heels of the Jeff Koons’ retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art which runs until October 19. It will re-open in November at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and this will coincide with a display at the Louvre.
Seven years in the making Koons subjected the idea for this sculpture to years of research modelling, computer rendering, milling, polishing, lacquering and polishing again before the final form was released. It is one of five balloon monkeys (blue, magenta, orange, red and yellow). The estimate for the piece is $20-30 million. Last November Balloon Dog Orange sold at Christie’s for $58,405,000, a world auction record for a living artist.
UPDATE: IT MADE $25,925,000.