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Katherine Heigl and her two-year-old daughter, Naleigh.
Family Values: Jeff Koons & Co.
Today there are as many meanings of the word “family” as there are families. Welcome to the new normal.
December 2010
“I didn’t experience great works of art when I was younger,” says
onetime enfant terrible Jeff Koons, recalling that his primer in
aesthetics came from his father, who owned a furniture shop in York,
Pennsylvania. The artist’s own kids, however, live in a mini
Metropolitan Museum: The walls of their Upper East Side town house are
chockablock with works by Courbet, Poussin, and Picasso, among others.
“Hey, Blakey!” Koons called out to his four-year-old on a recent
morning. “Who’s your favorite artist?” “Massys,” came the hesitant
reply. “He really does love Massys,” a Flemish Old Master, explains
Koons, “but sometimes the kids get shy. They don’t know whether to say
their dad, or whatever.” The brood also includes the artist’s daughter
Shannon, 35, whom he didn’t meet until 1995 (she was put up for adoption
by her mother, a college student at the time), and his son Ludwig, 18,
with whom Koons reunited in 2009 following a five-year break imposed by
his ex-wife, Italian porn star and politician Ilona Staller. Chez Koons,
the “Art Game” is a favorite bedtime ritual. “My dad will say, ‘Find the
Picasso or Dalí,’” says Sean, nine, “and the person who finds them all
first gets to stay up five minutes later.”
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