Jeff Koons

A controversial figure in contemporary art for over three decades, Jeff Koons transformed everyday, even banal objects into sprawling works of art that pushed the boundaries of art and good taste to their conceivable limits. Koons' best work held a childlike fascination for the most overhyped or disposable elements of popular culture - toys, advertising, cartoon characters, media figures - and asked the viewer to recast these objects in their mind as fine art. Creations like "Rabbit," which cast an inflatable toy rabbit in stainless steel, or "Michael Jackson and Bubbles," which reproduced the eccentric artist and his monkey pet as heroic sculpture, earned Koons a dual reputation as a playful, energetic force for change in the contemporary world, and the scene's most vulgar charlatan. His most extreme work - a series of explicit images featuring Koons and pornographic actress Ilona Staller - seemed to confirm these latter interpretations, though the condemnations were rendered largely moot by the fact that Koons had gone out of his way to present himself as commercial-minded and lowbrow for many years. However one interpreted Koons' work, it did fulfill some of art's most important requirements - to stimulate imagination and debate and to inspire others to create their own work - which cemented his status as one of the most vital figures on the contemporary art landscape.