The world’s most successful living artist — Jeff Koons — is working on a new series of paintings inspired by the Old Masters, using lasers and stencils and an army of low-paid assistants.
Surrealist painter Alex Gardega responded to a help-wanted ad and was given a tour of Koons’ factory on West 29th Street. “It was beyond insane,” he told me.
Gardega said, “They have lasers printing holes in paper, so they make thousands of pieces of paper with holes in it, and these artists sit all day long and take one stencil, dab paint over it, take the next over that . . . repeat hundreds of times a day — all for a 5-inch section.”
Koons, whose “Balloon Dog (Orange)” sold for $58.4 million at a 2013 auction, is said to have three shifts of assistants working around the clock, about 100 people total.
“Jeff’s a tough taskmaster,” said one art expert. “He has workers that just polish sculptures all day. There is high turnover.”
“It made an iPhone factory look like a fun place to work,” said Gardega. “It was the most lifeless place I have ever seen. I left there, and then right to the Met to clean my soul. Rembrandt would have spit on his fluorescent-lit floors.”
Reps for Koons didn’t get back to me.
