From porn-star wife’s nether regions to Balloon Dogs: Hong Kong-bound Jeff Koons talks ‘plastic art’, selfies and Art Basel

For an artist whose reputation is built on large-scale spectacle – think of those colossal canines, Puppy (1992) and Balloon Dog (1994), or the humungous-limbed Seated Ballerina (2017), or even his gigantic Bouquet of Tulips (2016) currently on offer to Paris, about which that city is being somewhat sniffy – there is little pizazz about the entrance to Jeff Koons’ New York workplace. On a chilly February afternoon, the West Chelsea street is full of sanitation trucks and storage spaces. “Private” states a blank door at the river end, plus a single clue: “Studio”.

Inside, it is deeply quiet. Koons is a hands-free – though emphatically not hands-off – artist. Many years ago, on a summer job, he damaged his hand in a machine and worried he would get arthritis. This, plus a taste for Marcel Duchamp, led him on the path of what he calls “the ready made”.

So the initial creative concept (say, toy rabbit – except shiny!) is his. The desire for perfect execution is his. But the physical work is done by assistants, of whom he has had many. Later, I ask for a current headcount, and he says, vaguely, “130”, but that cannot be quite right because the previous time we met, in November 2014, when he had a Gagosian show in Hong Kong, he gave the same figure and, according to news reports, he has cut back since then. That was the year he was No 7 on ArtReview magazine’s Power 100 list. Now he’s at No 54.

The silence is really something. In one room, about half-a-dozen people are working on computers; quick peeks indicate they are digitally twiddling with baroque and rococo features. In the next room, five more are toiling online, as hushed as illuminating monks; an outsider checking her emails – guest password: LaughSmile4Ever – can feel faintly profane. Perhaps this is an example of top-down management because Koons himself, at least in interview mode, is so soft-spoken you soon find yourself whispering in tandem. (Listening to the tape later, I jumped when a studio telephone shrieked over our murmured confab.)

And yet when he arrives, he elects to conduct our conversation in public, at a work bench in the room of the five toilers. As we sit down, facing each other, something bothers him. There’s a nanosecond ripple of discomfort. He extracts a sheet of white paper from a nearby pile and places it down carefully, close to his right elbow. When I look underneath, it’s hiding a coffee-cup ring.