Jeff Koons Found Guilty of Plagiarizing 1980s Ad Campaign
Ordered to pay the original artist $153,000 USD in damages.
After four years of court battles, a French judge has decided that Jeff Koons is guilty of copying the work of a Parisian artist’s ad campaign from the 1980s. Koons was accused of stealing ad executive Franck Davidovici’s artwork called, Fait d’Hiver, which he transformed into a sculpture of the same name. The 1985 advertisement was made by Davidoci for French clothing brand Naf Naf.
In 2014, Davidovici paid a visit to the Pompidou Center where he encountered the work and then sued Koons for copyright infringement. He requested €300,000 EUR ($352,000 USD) in damages as well as the seizure of Koons’ sculpture by the state, as per Artnet. Last Thursday, Koons was ordered to pay a total of €135,000 EUR ($153,000 USD).
“Jeff Koons LLC was also fined €11,000 for reproducing the work on Koons’s website, while a publishing house that sold a book in which the work was reproduced was fined €2,000. The court did not, however, order the sculpture’s seizure,” Artnet reported.
Let us know your thoughts on this lawsuit. Elsewhere in art, JOYA and Arsham Studio are set to release a limited edition EXOPLANET CANDLE.
