Zaha Hadid:
Zaha Hadid was born on October 31, 1950, in Baghdad. She grew up in one of Baghdad's first Bauhaus-inspired building during an era in which "modernism connoted glamor and progressive thinking" in the Middle East. She received a degree in mathematics from the American University of Beirut before moving to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, where she met Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, and Bernard Tschumi. She worked for her former professors, Koolhaas and Zenghelis, at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; she became a partner in 1977. Through her association with Koolhaas, she met Peter Rice, the engineer who gave her support and encouragement early on at a time when her work seemed difficult. In 1980 she established her own London-based practice. During the 1980s she also taught at the Architectural Association.
Her breakthrough was in 1983, when she struggled for the design of the Peak Leisure Club (in Hong-Kong) and won with a series of paintings. She made a show of buildings on a mountainside that were not organized according to the laws of gravity, but seemed to have found their place by an earthquake. The buildings were crooked and went through eachother. The paintings showed a world in which reality can not be realized and they characterized a transition in modern architecture.
I really like her buildings, because it took me a while to see how the building realy looked like, since it's made so complex. You can see they really thought about the design to make stunning buildings. I also like the idea of ''a world in which realitly can not be realized''. Because that's what makes the buildings special, and you don't often see buildings like these. I was really impressed by her work because of this.
Jeff Koons:
Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania. His father Henry Koons was a furniture dealer and interior decorator; his mother Gloria, a housewife and seamstress. As a child he went door to door after school selling gift-wrapping paper and candy to earn pocket-money. As a teenager he revered Salvador Dalí, to the extent that he visited him at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. Koons studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art. While a visiting student at the Art Institute, Koons met the artist Ed Paschke, who became a major influence and for whom he worked as a studio assistant in the late 1970s. After college, he moved to New York in 1977 and worked at the membership desk of the Museum of Modern Art while establishing himself as an artist. During this time, he dyed his hair red and would often cultivate a pencil mustache, after Dalí. In 1980, he got licensed to sell mutual funds and stocks and began working as a Wall Street commodities broker at First Investors Corporation. After a summer with his parents in Sarasota, Florida (Koons took on a brief job there as a political canvasser), he returned to New York and found a new career as a commodities broker, first at Clayton Brokerage Company and then at Smith Barney.
Jeff Koons started to work withing series, in which the first was called The Pre-New, The New, and Equilibrium series. He then moved on to the Statuary series, Luxury and Degradation series, Made in Heaven series, Banality series, Puppy, and the Celebration series.
I really like his art as well, because it immediately catched my eye. Especially the Celebration series. They're very colourful and you don't see art like the Celebration series often. That's why I like it as well. I also like ''Puppy.'' Since I love dogs and has a lot of colours too. And I never saw art of a dog that huge before.
