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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 \u2014 all chosen to satisfy the sculpture\u2019s various sectional color requirements, marked \u201cpupil,\u201d \u201ciris,\u201d \u201cpony dark\u201d and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the flowers only open in the middle of the day so you\u2019ll probably get the biggest burst of color when the sun is strongest, which is kind of great,\u201d Wishard said. <\/p>\n
The cubist-inspired sculpture \u2014 half toy rocking horse head, half toy dinosaur head \u2014 is alive in more ways than one. The plants bloom and over time also take on a life and personality of their own.<\/p>\n
![\"Rows](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758726434_888_\")
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Flowers and plants lay adjacent to Jeff Koon\u2019s sculpture \u201cSplit-Rocker.\u201d (Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758726434_749_\")
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The plants chosen for the sculpture are sustainable, native to California and should flower almost year-round. (Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times) <\/p>\n
\u201cCertain plants will start to dominate a certain area, and some will be surviving and maybe blooming a little more,\u201d Koons said. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Govan said the conversation about bringing one of Koons\u2019 living sculptures to L.A. began 20 years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like when [\u2018Split-Rocker\u2019] was at Rockefeller Center, it was dying to move to L.A.,\u201d Govan said to Koons with a smile. <\/p>\n
LACMA ultimately acquired the exact same artist proof of the creature that smiled beneficently over Midtown Manhattan. Edition 1 of \u201cSplit-Rocker\u201d is currently installed at Glenstone, a museum in Potomac, Md. Govan noted that the \u201cSplit-Rocker\u201d at Glenstone is relatively hidden compared with LACMA\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758726434_661_\")
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Michael Govan, left, and Jeff Koons talk before Koons installs the first plant in \u201cSplit-Rocker.\u201d Govan says he sees the sculpture as a guardian of the museum, like the lions outside a public library.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
After Koons descended from the lift, he and Govan circled \u201cSplit-Rocker,\u201d 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 \u201cSplit-Rocker\u201d will draw all kinds of pollinators, including bees, butterflies and birds.<\/p>\n
It will also attract children, Govan noted \u2014 a fact that both he and Koons feel particularly good about. <\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully this will create many new museumgoers,\u201d Govan said.<\/p>\n
Like another of LACMA\u2019s prominent outdoor sculptures, Chris Burden\u2019s \u201cUrban Light,\u201d \u201cSplit-Rocker,\u201d is likely to become an L.A. landmark \u2014 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\u2019 the Pup, as well as myriad Mayan, Polynesian, fairy tale and Gothic-style facades.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s easy to imagine Hollywood one day making an apocalyptic film that features the abandoned landscape with only these museum relics still standing \u2014 and \u201cSplit-Rocker\u201d erupting in explosive, unkempt flowers. The idea makes Koons smile, his blue eyes twinkling.<\/p>\n
![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758726435_426_\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cA piece like this has kind of a spiritual side to it because of the link with nature,\u201d said Jeff Koons.<\/p>\n
(Carlin Stiehl \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cA piece like this has kind of a spiritual side to it because of the link with nature,\u201d said Koons. \u201cBut 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
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 \u201cSplit-Rocker\u201d from a vantage point just slightly above. Koons smiled broadly, clearly liking what he saw.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an outdoor sculpture and indoor sculpture,\u201d Govan said.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cSplit-Rocker\u201d in silence. In about two weeks it will be fully planted and ready to take on a life of its own.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758726435_63_\")
<\/p>\n
Edition 1 of Jeff Koons\u2019 \u201cSplit-Rocker,\u201d photographed in Versailles, France, has since moved to a museum in Maryland.<\/p>\n
(Laurent Lecat)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeff Koons stood atop a construction lift and planted a small, silvery gray dudleya succulent on the nose…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":82946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,53905,28653,1239,19,17,22104,39930,55331,47144,28652,55334,55335,13516,53421,7601,55332,55333],"class_list":{"0":"post-82945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-flower","16":"tag-govan","17":"tag-hollywood","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jeff-koons","21":"tag-kind","22":"tag-koon","23":"tag-l-a","24":"tag-lacma","25":"tag-landscape-architect","26":"tag-more-way","27":"tag-museum","28":"tag-plant","29":"tag-sculpture","30":"tag-split-rocker","31":"tag-wilshire-boulevard"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}