Jeff Koons greets me by name before asking a question that has nothing to do with watches. “What part of the city are you in?”

When I tell him I’m in New York’s East Village, he smiles and immediately starts recalling his own years there. Fourth Street. Fifth Street. Bond Street before it became NoHo. Friends who owned the Red Bar on the corner of Seventh and First. By the time I tell him they would now be my neighbours, we’ve spent the opening minutes talking about a shared geography rather than the reason for the interview. It is an easy, generous beginning and one that sets the tone for everything that follows. Throughout our conversation Koons never rushes an answer. He listens, pauses before speaking and smiles almost constantly, whether he is discussing Michelangelo, childhood memories, Plato or the mechanics of a tourbillon.

The occasion is Hublot’s latest collaboration with one of the defining artists of the past half century. On one side sits the Classic Fusion Balloon Dog, which translates one of the best known works from Koons’ Celebration series into a watch. On the other is the MP-14 Origin, a sapphire and titanium tourbillon inspired by the creation of the universe. They could hardly appear more different, yet over the next 45 minutes Koons returns to the same handful of ideas so consistently that the connection between them becomes almost inevitable.

Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog Red

Hublot MP-14 Origin by Jeff Koons

I begin by asking about acceptance. For decades Koons has challenged accepted ideas of taste and value, encouraging people to look again at objects that many would dismiss without a second thought. His answer reaches back to childhood. Growing up in a middle class family, museums played only a small part in his early life. Instead, he learnt to appreciate the objects around him, whether they were toys, ornaments or an ashtray belonging to his grandparents.

“Through my kind of dialogue with the external world – with different images, different objects – I’ve tried to practice acceptance that everything is perfect in its own being,” he says. “If my grandparents had a little ashtray that I enjoyed playing with, that’s equivalent to looking at and appreciating a Michelangelo sculpture because the only thing that’s relevant is the amount of awe and wonderment you have in that interaction. There is no hierarchy… It’s all equal, so there is no place for hierarchy.”

The same philosophy runs through The New, Banality and Celebration, the body of work that introduced Balloon Dog. For all its polished surface and childlike familiarity, Koons sees the sculpture as something rooted in much older ideas, a point that becomes clearer later in our conversation. Before we arrive there, though, the same thinking reappears in a place where many people would least expect to find it: luxury.

Balloon Dog by Jeff Koons

When Luxury and Degradation was first shown in 1986, Koons was exploring the way advertising manufactures aspiration. Nearly 40 years later he admits that his own understanding has changed. Working with Louis Vuitton, BMW, and now Hublot, has made him appreciate something he had largely overlooked before: the extraordinary amount of care invested in making exceptional objects.

Hublot Ambassador Jeff Koons wearing the Classic Fusion Balloon Dog by Jeff Koons Red

“My concept of luxury has changed,” he says. “Luxury and Degradation was really trying to communicate to people not to fall for luxury… but I now realise the amount of care and the quality of the materials. Of course Hublot cares completely about all the materials, the quality of their manufacturing. They try to make the best timepiece they can.”

The word, “care”, returns repeatedly. It also explains why Hublot appealed to him. I suggest that it is a brand capable of provoking strong opinions, something Koons himself has experienced throughout his career. He dismisses the comparison almost immediately saying that division never entered his thinking. What impressed him was the commitment he encountered when he visited the manufacture, from the engineers and specialists in material science to the apprentice watchmakers learning their craft.

“I never thought about the division,” he says. “I thought about the quality, the commitment to making something the best they could.” Visiting the manufacture, he found people who were constantly looking for ways to improve both the object and the process behind it. During the collaboration, his requests for different levels of sheen, transparency and reflection became opportunities rather than obstacles. “Hublot was always seeking solutions to material problems.”

The comparison with Koons’ own studio is difficult to ignore. Both depend on specialists solving problems that most people would never notice. Both have become known for stretching materials beyond what once seemed possible. Mention that similarity and he begins talking, not about technical achievement, but about the excitement of discovery.

“We could be looking at a sapphire, and everybody would smile at each other and light up. ‘Look at that colour. Look at the transparency of that material.’ Or if looking at a tourbillon, how it functions and is turning and spinning – everybody would look at each other and be excited.”

It is the sameturn of  phrase he used earlier when talking about his grandparents’ ashtray and Michelangelo. The materials have changed. The response has not. That idea becomes the natural bridge to the Classic Fusion Balloon Dog, a watch that, despite taking its form from one of the most recognisable sculptures of the past 30 years, begins not with polished steel or coloured ceramic, but with the same search for awe and wonder that has shaped Koons’ work from the beginning.

When Koons first saw the Classic Fusion, the discussion was never about placing a sculpture on a dial. Like every collaboration, it became an exercise in discovering what was possible and accepting what was not. There were practical limits, he says, moments when Hublot had to explain that a particular dimension or finish simply could not be achieved. What impressed him was not that those conversations happened, but that they rarely ended there. The question was never whether something was possible, only how close they could come to the idea they were pursuing.

Three versions were created, in mirror-polished stainless steel, red anodised aluminium and blue anodised aluminium, each limited to 200 pieces. Rather than beginning with a finished watch, Koons and Hublot started again, reshaping the Classic Fusion around the inflated forms that define Balloon Dog. The crystal became more domed, the case softer and rounder, the screws more prominent, while the strap, crown and clasp were all redesigned to maintain the impression that the entire watch had been inflated with air. Small details, from the balloon-shaped crown and bulbous dog tail protruding from the case at 10:30 to the dog that forms the counterweight to the seconds hand, were all reconsidered. Even the movement became part of the exercise. Hublot’s HUB1710 self-winding calibre received a custom oscillating weight whose rounded form echoes the inflated surfaces found throughout the watch.

Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog (©Revolution)

“The Classic Fusion is a watch that has a very nice comfortability about it,” Koons says. “I think it captures the quality of the Balloon Dog that I like. It has enough optimism. It’s an optimistic piece, but at the same time it has a sense that it’s tied to something that has a more profound base to it.”

Most people stop at the optimism. It is difficult not to. Balloon Dog has become one of the defining images of contemporary art precisely because it appears so immediately familiar. We all recognise it before we begin thinking about it. Koons, though, has spent three decades thinking about it.

Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog Red (©Revolution)

“I always like to think of the Balloon Dog as having some iconic aspect to it,” he continues,  “it’s not only something very contemporary that represents optimism and excitement in the moment, but you could think of it almost like a ritualistic type image… in Palaeolithic times a whole community could have rallied around an image or an object similar to a balloon dog.”

He pauses before taking the thought to another level. “It comes to do with a sense of profoundness of membrane. All of our organs, our body, all have membranes, and what’s highlighted in a Balloon Dog is its membrane. I believe that is the conceptual anchor.” It is one of those moments where the familiar suddenly becomes unfamiliar again. What appears to be an inflatable party decoration turns into something connected with biology, ritual and the human body. The sculpture has always rewarded a second look. The watch asks much the same of its wearer.

Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog Blue (©Revolution)

“I’m very honoured to have this dialogue with Balloon Dog,” he says. “I’ve wanted to be involved in communication. That’s what art is. It’s to create something, create a vocabulary, and through that vocabulary to try to communicate with people, and so I feel that I’ve been able to achieve that through the Balloon Dog.”

He is reluctant to leave the sculpture there, though. There is another layer he wants to explain. “I love pastoral poetry,” he says with a smile. “It’s art about art. If you look at the poetry, the different rhymes, the different rhythms, it’s all based on mathematics… it’s based on the ideal of Arcadia, but at the same time there is death in Arcadia. It’s just like thinking of time and space. You have the past, you have the present and you have the future… A balloon dog is functioning on all these levels. We have all the excitement of this moment, an optimism going forward, and also in the past.”

Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog Silver (©Revolution)

It is an extraordinary answer to a question about what many people would simply describe as a shiny balloon animal. Yet it also explains why Koons has always resisted separating popular culture from philosophy. The two have never been opposites in his work. One simply provides a route into the other.

That same approach explains why the collaboration does not end with Balloon Dog. Alongside it sits the MP-14 Origin, one of the most technically ambitious watches Hublot has produced, its sapphire and titanium architecture built around the brand’s first automatic central tourbillon. Rather than representing the universe, the watch attempts to reinvent the moment of its creation.

Hublot Ambassador Jeff Koons wearing the MP-14 Origin by Jeff Koons

If the Classic Fusion explores the language of sculpture, the MP-14 Origin ventures into architecture. The watch is built around a 44mm octagonal sapphire case requiring more than 500 hours of machining. Within it, concentric rings of white gold, diamonds and blue sapphires appear to orbit around a concealed central tourbillon beneath a translucent blue sapphire dome inspired by Koons’ Gazing Ball series. Floating cubes travel around the dial to indicate the passing hours and minutes, while the entire movement seems to hover in space.

Hublot MP-14 Origin by Jeff Koons

At the centre sits the new HUB9014 calibre, comprising 594 components and equipped with a peripheral winding system that leaves the movement completely visible. Hublot describes the tourbillon as the watch’s first pulse, the point from which the entire structure expands. The integrated sapphire bracelet, fixed using titanium screws, extends that illusion from the case to the wrist.

HUB9014 calibre

Koons sees something else. “In a way,” he says, “I think both the pieces are about abstraction.” Balloon Dog approaches that abstraction through philosophy and archetype, while the MP-14 explores it through mathematics, physics and our understanding of time and space. “It’s dealing with abstraction, too – the reality of being and existence of the universe – where the Balloon Dog watch would have more archetypes laid on top of it.”

When I suggest that he has effectively compressed the creation of the cosmos onto a wrist, he laughs gently. “I wanted to make something that had some sense of awe and wonderment when looking at it, and that would have an expansive quality to it. A sense of having a center, but at the same time an expansiveness to it.”

Both watches took almost two years to develop. Koons is again quick to reject any suggestion that he simply licensed an image and left the rest to Hublot. He describes an intense dialogue between his studio and the manufacture, working through countless variations using three-dimensional modelling and AI visualisation before settling on the final forms.

Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog Blue

“I was very involved,” he says. “I’m right there. I’m at the center of all of this. We were in dialogue about the creation of a watch for approximately a two-year time period, trying different ideas, different dimensions, different developmental design forms and we were able to accomplish what we set out to do.”

A limited edition of 30 pieces, the MP-14 Origin is a watch that very few people will ever own, yet Koons has spent the past 30 minutes talking about universality, communication and shared experience. I wonder whether those ideas can ever sit comfortably alongside something so exclusive. His answer arrives through a painting.

Hublot MP-14 Origin by Jeff Koons

“I love the Mona Lisa. I don’t own the Mona Lisa. The ownership of the Mona Lisa is meaningless to me. I’m glad I don’t own it. If I owned it, oh my gosh, all the problems I would have taking care of it.” He laughs before continuing. “It’s about the idea. I get excited thinking that people are maybe walking through Piccadilly and can see an ad, or maybe they see something in Times Square, or in a magazine. It’s exposure to the ideas. That’s really what’s relevant.”

Throughout our conversation, Koons rarely talks about possession. He refers instead to encounters. Seeing, feeling and remembering matter more to him than ownership itself. As he begins describing Michelangelo’s Pietà, his voice briefly shifts from careful explanation to something closer to childlike enthusiasm. “I melt in front of it,” he says. “I am so amazed at all the different levels of humanism in the dialogue. [As for] ownership, you can carry it when you walk out of the room. It’s how that interaction has transcended you, how it becomes part of you. It’s about what’s in your being. Not about what still is externalised. It’s about what’s inside you.”

The same could easily be said of watches. Collectors often speak about rarity, value and provenance, but the pieces that remain with us tend to be the ones that changed the way we think or made us feel something the first time we saw them. By Koons’ definition, ownership is simply one possible outcome of that relationship, not its purpose.

Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog Silver

As our time begins to run out, I ask something I have been wondering almost from the start. Sitting opposite me is a man whose work has often been described as provocative, exuberant, even confrontational. Yet the person on my screen has answered every question with patience and warmth, considering each one before responding. I ask where that more unruly side goes during an interview.

He smiles. “I’m the same person,” he says. “I really try to be open to everything. I have no place for judgements, and I believe that empowers me. I always try to communicate the empowerment of the removal of judgement, because when you remove judgement, everything’s available to you to participate and to be involved.”

The answer circles effortlessly back to where we began. Acceptance. The absence of hierarchy. Removing judgement. “If I look back through all my bodies of work,” he continues, “the dialogue has always been about acceptance and the removal of judgement. When you don’t have any hierarchies, all anxiety is removed. There’s nothing to be anxious about, and if you can remove anxiety, that’s enlightenment.”

I ask whether that philosophy is something he has always possessed or something he has learnt. “I would say that I learnt it over time,” he replies. “Through being engaged with my work and trying to always have an understanding, at least for myself, what is art? How can art serve?”

It turns out to be the perfect bridge to one final question. Long before Jeff Koons became one of the world’s best known artists, he was a remarkably successful salesman. As a child he sold wrapping paper, greetings cards and chocolates door to door. Later he worked on Wall Street while establishing himself as an artist. Few people have thought more deeply about desire, persuasion and human behaviour. I ask whether those experiences are connected. “I always have enjoyed sales,” he says, laughing. “I have eight children, and I always try to tell all of my children that sales is communication. It’s in every aspect of everything that people do.”

Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog

He remembers knocking on strangers’ doors as a boy, never knowing who would answer, whether he would be invited inside or what he would find when the door opened. Looking back, he sees those encounters not as lessons in selling but in acceptance. “I never knew what the person who answered the door was going to look like. I never knew if they would invite me into the home or what the home would look like. I was open to everything… and in the long run, it is really all about communication.”

He pauses before bringing the conversation gently to its conclusion. “We’ve been speaking about objects the whole time, about watches, speaking about art, but at the end of the day, we’re serving people… everything eventually goes to dust… what’s of meaning is our relationship to each other.”

A few seconds later the interview is over. Koons smiles once more, thanks me for the conversation and disappears from the screen.

I find myself thinking back, not to Classic Fusion Balloon Dog or the MP-14 Origin, but to those opening moments spent talking about a few streets in the East Village. It seems strangely appropriate. We had begun with a place that meant something to both of us and ended with the idea that every object, whether it is a child’s balloon, a tourbillon, a Michelangelo sculpture or a watch, is only ever a starting point. What remains, long after the object itself, is the connection it creates between people.

Tech Specs: Hublot Classic Fusion Balloon Dog

References 542.UR.8170.NR.JKN26 (red); 542.UB.5170.NR.JKN26 (blue); 542.SX.0820.NR.JKN26 (silver)
Movement HUB1710 self-winding calibre; 185 components; 27 jewels; 4Hz frequency; 50-hour power reserve; custom oscillating weight inspired by the rounded forms of the case
Case 42mm mirror-polished stainless steel, red anodised aluminium or blue anodised aluminium; domed sapphire crystal; balloon-inspired crown; decorative tail at 10.30; 50m water resistance
Dial Inflated metallic construction with domed indexes; balloon dog counterweight on the seconds hand; Jeff Koons signature at 6 o’clock
Strap Colour-matched rubber and metallic leather strap with deployant clasp
Price USD 25,100
Availability 200 pieces of each version

Tech Specs: Hublot MP-14 Origin by Jeff Koons

Reference 914.NJ.0100.JX.9941
Movement HUB9014 manufacture calibre; Hublot’s first automatic central tourbillon; 594 components; peripheral winding system; 3Hz frequency; 60-hour power reserve
Case 44mm octagonal sapphire and titanium case; integrated sapphire bracelet; 30m water resistance
Dial Polished sapphire crystal with two polished white-gold rings set with baguette diamonds and blue sapphires; stainless steel cube, with translucent red varnish for hour indicator; stainless steel cube for minute indicator; central tourbillon; translucent blue sapphire dome inspired by Koons’ Gazing Ball series
Price USD 488,000
Availability 30 pieces