What Keeps Jeff Koons Up at Night? Picasso.

Jeff Koons resembles his work: shiny, appealing, and reassuringly ebullient. He speaks with the endearing charisma of a born salesman, hooking you with cultural and art-historical references before the hypnotic upsell to humanistic psychology, in which everything can be viewed in terms of “life energy” and human potential. (His fondness for mirror-polished stainless steel, for example, is all about “the intoxicating quality of looking at something that affirms your own existence.”) Koons’s monumental balloon-flower bouquet, “Tulips” (1995-2004, at right), is expected to fetch between $20 million and $30 million this evening at Christie’s in New York, but what really keeps the artist up at night isn’t the prospect of overtaking Jasper Johns as the most expensive–or most life-affirming?–living artist.