Jeff Koons

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There’s a difference between being famous and being significant. I’m interested in significance — anything that can enrich our lives and make them vaster — but I’m really not interested in the idea of fame for fame’s sake.

So, what’s it like to have your works on the roof of the Met?

First, it is a wonderful location. My works have never had so much horizontal space around them. They’re up there on the roof, and all of a sudden the amount of space, the vastness, the void around them is really remarkable.

But most significant is being able to have a dialog with the collection: A piece like Balloon Dog taps into the mythic. It’s a little equestrian, a little bit like a Trojan Horse, even though it’s a dog. Even the act of making balloon-type animals like that, it’s supposedly quite an ancient act, from primitive cultures, of working with intestines.… Sacred Heart feels as though it’s connected to early Christian work and European history. And Coloring Book relates to the modernist part of the Metropolitan’s collection.

What you call a “dialog” with artists of the past has always been important to you, hasn’t it?

When I was younger, I always wanted to have a dialog with Roy Lichtenstein and Andy [Warhol] and Rauschenberg, with Dali and Picabia and Duchamp, and back on through Boucher and Fragonard, and on and on … Although I’ve always accepted that I had limitations, I always wanted to expand to whatever was possible. For me art has been a vehicle of self-acceptance. That started with the idea of accepting objects — external things in the world — then moved into what it’s really about, the acceptance of others.

For me, art has been about living to my full potential and about having viewers increase theirs. My work has always tried to communicate acceptance. It’s not about a rarefied object, because art is about people, life, experience. It’s about giving attention to the viewer so that hopefully they maintain enough confidence to experience communication.

You almost sound Buddhist.

I do believe that art is a hub that connects all of the disciplines of the world. Art can do that because it is so open and so easily clarifies things. It’s connects theology with philosophy and psychology and aesthetics and physics and any other discipline.

Can art change the world?

I think that people — and people’s gestures — change the world. And art is a vehicle of people’s gestures. So yes, I think that art changes the world.

Do you think of your art as political?

When people talk about political art, they generally mean something that is one-dimensional, about one cause or one specific issue, that doesn’t open itself up to much greater political issues. But I’m really dealing with the empowerment of the individual. I’ve always thought my art has been very political.

Do you make your art deliberately provocative?

No. When I was a younger artist I had great respect for the avant-garde. I just loved the idea of trying to make something new and different, because it was about bringing something to the table. But I believe that if you try to make something just to shock it ends up not having a very long lifespan. It’s not going to be archetypal or iconic or anything. What’s most shocking is honesty. If you’re really honest with yourself, that’s what people really find most shocking.

Well, one piece people might find shocking is Sacred Heart. What’s behind that work?

The meaning of Sacred Heart is not specific, and it comes from the work itself. I remember seeing a chocolate heart in Munich wrapped in reflective cellophane. It had two figures on the front – a little boy and a little girl – and I removed them to try to make something that balances. The piece balances on a fine point. It weighs a couple of tons. There’s a lot of steel there. But it tries to be somewhat graceful. It’s up on its toe like a ballerina. There’s some defying of gravity. It’s also on a tightrope between the baroque and something a little more modern. It could represent romantic love or spiritual love or Christian love. The bow might suggest that it is a present. Or it could be like a crown of thorns.