A behemoth West Highland terrier carpeted in bedding plants, Puppy employs the most saccharine of iconography-flowers and puppies-in a monument to the sentimental. With Puppy, Koons engaged both past and present, employing sophisticated computer modeling to create a work that references the 18th-century formal European garden. Extending the legacy of Marcel Duchamp's readymades, and integrating references to Minimalism and Pop, Koons presents art as a commodity that cannot be placed within the hierarchy of conventional aesthetics. His sculptural menagerie includes Plexiglas-encased Hoover vacuum cleaners, basketballs suspended in glass aquariums, porcelain homages to Michael Jackson and the Pink Panther, and glass depictions of himself coupled with his then-wife Ilona Staller, also known as La Cicciolina (a former adult-film star and member of the Italian parliament). Drawing on the visual language of advertising, marketing, and the entertainment industry and with the stated intent to "communicate with the masses," Koons tested the boundaries between popular and elite culture. Jeff Koons rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated era and the attendant crisis of representation.
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