In Michel Houellebecq’s 2010 novel, a fictional artist struggles to paint “Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons Dividing Up the Art Market.” Koons, who holds the record for the most expensive piece by a living artist, embodies a duality: cunning salesman and ascetic. He’s a pop culture figure and esoteric conceptualist, rivaled only by Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí. Since his 1980 debut “The New,” he’s shown at major museums, Versailles, Hydra, and the moon.

Roberta Smith called his 2014 Whitney retrospective “reek[ing] of Gilded Age excess.” Jerry Saltz called the sculptures “huge, shiny baubles for billionaires.” Koons is mainstream: mentioned in Lady Gaga’s “Applause” and “The Simpsons”; his “Balloon Dog” beheaded in “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” He’s collaborated with BMW, Dom Pérignon, Google, Louis Vuitton, and Supreme. At 71, he’s earnest, comparing “Ilona’s Asshole” to Courbet’s “The Origin of the World.” Richard Prince says, “He’s either from another planet or he’s on another planet.” In his Hell’s Kitchen studio, a stepladder with mirrored-glass orbs models a “stairway-to-heaven-type thing,” part of a new series expanding on his “Gazing Ball” project.