Jeff Koons stood atop a construction lift and planted a small, silvery gray dudleya succulent on the nose of his monumental topiary sculpture “Split-Rocker” at Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
“I’m so excited, Los Angeles is feeling like home!” the 70-year-old artist exclaimed Monday from his perch halfway up his 37-foot-tall sculpture while workers in hard hats and various LACMA employees cheered and clapped below.
“It is home!” LACMA Director and Chief Executive Michael Govan yelled up at the beaming Koons.
LACMA Director and Chief Executive Michael Govan, left, and Jeff Koons look at the installation of the 37-foot-tall sculpture.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
1. Jeff Koons, left, ascends to plant a dudleya, the first succulent in the installation of 50,000 flowering plants for his sculpture “Split-Rocker.” 2. Alex Casillas, center, goes over the planting plans for the monumental sculpture. 3. Lobularia rest adjacent to Jeff Koons’ sculpture. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
LACMA announced the sculpture’s acquisition in June, noting that it would anchor the east side of the campus at the David Geffen Galleries opening in April 2026. Work soon began on erecting the towering armature, which is made of 1,800 linear feet of steel tubing and 500 planter boxes.
Koons flew in from New York this week to perform the ceremonial first planting of what will be more than 50,000 flowering perennials and succulents in 110 pounds of soil packed into the sculpture and held in place with wire mesh and a dark green landscape fabric.
Koons worked for more than a year with a team of landscape architects from LRM, including Kathy Wishard, who noted that the plants chosen for the sculpture are sustainable, native to California and should flower almost year-round — ultimately creating their own ecosystem with a web of roots that will further strengthen the creation.
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Rows of flowers and succulents sat beside a back wall, ready to be planted by a team of workers from Pierre Landscape. They included exotic-sounding offerings such as white trailing lantana, orange flame gazania rigens and pink kaboom lampranthus — all chosen to satisfy the sculpture’s various sectional color requirements, marked “pupil,” “iris,” “pony dark” and more.
“Some of the flowers only open in the middle of the day so you’ll probably get the biggest burst of color when the sun is strongest, which is kind of great,” Wishard said.
The cubist-inspired sculpture — half toy rocking horse head, half toy dinosaur head — is alive in more ways than one. The plants bloom and over time also take on a life and personality of their own.
Flowers and plants lay adjacent to Jeff Koon’s sculpture “Split-Rocker.” (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
The plants chosen for the sculpture are sustainable, native to California and should flower almost year-round. (Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
“Certain plants will start to dominate a certain area, and some will be surviving and maybe blooming a little more,” Koons said. “But even on a daily basis, people could come through in the morning and have one kind of an emotional interaction with the piece, and they could come back in the evening and it could be completely different.”
Govan said the conversation about bringing one of Koons’ living sculptures to L.A. began 20 years ago.
“I felt like when [‘Split-Rocker’] was at Rockefeller Center, it was dying to move to L.A.,” Govan said to Koons with a smile.
LACMA ultimately acquired the exact same artist proof of the creature that smiled beneficently over Midtown Manhattan. Edition 1 of “Split-Rocker” is currently installed at Glenstone, a museum in Potomac, Md. Govan noted that the “Split-Rocker” at Glenstone is relatively hidden compared with LACMA’s sculpture, which prominently greets drivers as they head west down Wilshire Boulevard. It acts as a kind of guardian, Govan mused, like the lions that traditionally sit sentry beside libraries and museums.
Michael Govan, left, and Jeff Koons talk before Koons installs the first plant in “Split-Rocker.” Govan says he sees the sculpture as a guardian of the museum, like the lions outside a public library.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
After Koons descended from the lift, he and Govan circled “Split-Rocker,” viewing it from all sides as Govan described how the surrounding landscape will ultimately include a row of trees, a set of stairs and a streetside cafe, as well as a slope of green leading to the sculpture, which will be easily accessible from the main sidewalk along the boulevard. Koons said “Split-Rocker” will draw all kinds of pollinators, including bees, butterflies and birds.
It will also attract children, Govan noted — a fact that both he and Koons feel particularly good about.
“Hopefully this will create many new museumgoers,” Govan said.
Like another of LACMA’s prominent outdoor sculptures, Chris Burden’s “Urban Light,” “Split-Rocker,” is likely to become an L.A. landmark — infinitely photographed and shared on social media feeds worldwide. It also joins a proud history of L.A. fantasy and programmatic architecture, noted Govan, particularly along Wilshire Boulevard, where Hollywood set design bleds into the cityscape in wild and unusual forms, including the now-gone Brown Derby and Tail o’ the Pup, as well as myriad Mayan, Polynesian, fairy tale and Gothic-style facades.
The sculpture contributes to an otherworldly environment in its current position, Govan said. It peers across the street at the bubbling La Brea Tar Pits with their fiber-glass mammoths and saber-tooth cats. It’s easy to imagine Hollywood one day making an apocalyptic film that features the abandoned landscape with only these museum relics still standing — and “Split-Rocker” erupting in explosive, unkempt flowers. The idea makes Koons smile, his blue eyes twinkling.
“A piece like this has kind of a spiritual side to it because of the link with nature,” said Jeff Koons.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
“A piece like this has kind of a spiritual side to it because of the link with nature,” said Koons. “But at the same time, it has this mythic side in that it really deals with human history and the way our civilizations have strived to be able to realize culture and a way to serve.”
Govan and Koons next walked up a back staircase into the new David Geffen Galleries, emerging into the light that shone through the floor-to-ceiling windows that perfectly framed “Split-Rocker” from a vantage point just slightly above. Koons smiled broadly, clearly liking what he saw.
“It’s an outdoor sculpture and indoor sculpture,” Govan said.
He and Koons continued down the broad hall-like bridge, turning once more when they reached the far end above the tar pits. They looked back at “Split-Rocker” in silence. In about two weeks it will be fully planted and ready to take on a life of its own.
Edition 1 of Jeff Koons’ “Split-Rocker,” photographed in Versailles, France, has since moved to a museum in Maryland.
(Laurent Lecat)