Jeff Koons, whose sculptures and work have typically relied on appropriated imagery, has develop into identified for complicating the which means of a duplicate. Whereas it’s often the artist himself who decides what counts as authentic and pretend in his work, this week it was an Italian court docket that had what would be the closing phrase on one of many sculptures from his storied “Banality” sequence, which dates again to the late ’80s.
A court docket in Milan has dominated {that a} sculpture of two snake-like creatures that Koons had tried to say was an “unsatisfactory prototype” is, the truth is, an genuine art work by him. The Italian publication Corriere della Serra first reported information of the authorized saga, which was initiated by an unnamed insurance coverage dealer who had purchased the work at an public sale for 500,000 lire in 1991.
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There are three variations within the version of the work, titled Serpents, in response to Corriere della Serra. The collector claims that he owns one of many originals. Koons has tried to say in any other case.
The “Banality” sequence is amongst Koons’s most celebrated our bodies of labor. It options quite a few sculptures that resemble mass-market tchotchkes, and contains Koons’s famed Michael Jackson and Bubbles piece. A model of Serpents separate from the one on the middle of the Italian lawsuit bought at Christie’s in 2019 for $711,000—a small sum in comparison with the tens of millions of {dollars} that different works from the sequence have commanded on the public sale block.
The collector mentioned that, in 1997, he had tried to promote Serpents at Christie’s for $100,000. However when the collector sought authentication from Koons, the artist declined to say it was an actual work by him. The case made it to a New York court docket, and Koons reportedly declared that the work was a prototype.
The collector additionally claims that, afterward, in 2014, a Milanese seller approached him with the hope of shopping for Serpents. However Koons had reportedly labeled the work an “unsatisfactory prototype,” primarily making it in order that the sale couldn’t happen. Pissed off by the obstacle to his plans, the collector took Koons to court docket.
Corriere della Serra reported that Koons may very well be requested by the court docket to compensate the collector, who appeared to trace at doable plans to promote Serpents. “Now the work is invaluable,” the collector advised the publication. “I need to see what occurs. Who is aware of how the market will obtain the information.”
ARTnews has reached out to a spokesperson for Tempo Gallery, which represents Koons, for remark.
Koons and his work have perennially develop into the supply of authorized drama. Final 12 months, the artist and the Centre Pompidou, which held a retrospective of his work in 2014, misplaced a plagiarism swimsuit in France over a piece from the ’80s that drew on a trend commercial. A number of months later, Koons confronted one other lawsuit, this one introduced by a person whose stage-like setting for a porn star was appropriated for Koons’s sexually specific “Made in Heaven” sequence.
It’s additionally not the primary time a collector has sued Koons. In 2018, Steven Tananbaum sued Koons’s studio and his former gallery, Gagosian, for the non-delivery of sculptures price tens of millions of {dollars}. The lawsuit was settled in 2020 for an undisclosed sum.