Masters Wave 2: Jeff Koons returns for follow-up Louis Vuitton collection

published 12 October 2017

Following his debut partnership with Louis Vuitton, which was launched in April this year, Jeff Koons returns to the 1854 founded Parisian brand with a follow-up collection. The second chapter of Louis Vuitton Masters sees the American contemporary artist turn to Claude Monet, Paul Gaugin and Édouard Manet for inspiration.

Koons, who studied fine art at both the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and whose works features in the permanent collections of museums around the world including the Tate Gallery, London and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, first incorporated other artists' seminal works in 2015. Presented at the Gagosian Gallery in New York, the exhibition saw Koons place a mirrored blue ball on a small wooden shelf in front of repainted works including Leonardo da Vinci's 16th Century masterpiece Mona Lisa. "Monet is always referencing Rubens, Manet is referencing Raphael. Everybody enjoyed Titian", the artist was quoted, explaining his embrace of other artist's work.

For Louis Vuitton Masters Wave 2, Koons has added colourful facsimiles of paintings including Claude Monet's Water Lilies (1916) and J.M.W. Turner's 1839 expert study of light Ancient Rome to Louis Vuitton signature bags and luggage, from Speedy to Noé. In 1892, Paul Gaugin imagined a distant paradise when painting Delightful Land (the tranquil setting was in part inspired by his own snapshots of the Buddhist temple of Borobudur on the island of Java, Indonesia). The painting now graces Louis Vuitton's roomy Keepall, bring the travel inspiration full circle.