A judge has denied Jeff Koons’ request to dismiss a copyright case, though agreed—should Koons lose—that any damages would be limited to the three-year period prior to the lawsuit.
Koons, notorious for his slickly commercial, multi-million dollar artistic works as well as his high-profile collaborations with luxury brands, is in the middle of a legal battle with a set and prop designer.
As Artnet News reported, the designer, Michael Hayden, is alleging that Koons violated his copyright via repurposing an original sculpture made in 1988 that depicts a giant snake coiled around a rock—designed so Cicciolina, Koons’ former wife, porn star, and the artist’s co-actor in Koons’ “Made in Heaven” series, “could perform sexually explicit scenes, both live and on camera.” court papers state.
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Hayden claims Koons has gone on to incorporate the rock-serpent design into a lithograph, a painting and a sculpture without crediting Hayden; these Koons works have been exhibited all around the world. The Daily Beast reached out to Koons for comment.
Hayden’s lawyers say that Koons is displaying these aforementioned artworks on his website “without attributing any portion of copyright ownership to” Hayden, and while the designer isn’t seeking a specific amount in damages, the lawsuit notes that Hayden may “elect to recover statutory damages of up to $25,000” per instance of copyright violation.
The lawsuit alleges that Koons infringed upon Hayden’s design, which the latter obtained copyright registration for in 2020, with three different pieces. The first, a lithograph called Made in Heaven (1989), was originally commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, and later displayed on a huge Manhattan billboard.
The lawsuit alleges that Jeff and Ilona (Made in Heaven) (1990), a wooden sculpture that Koons debuted at the 1990 Venice Biennale, is actually an exact 3D replica of Hayden’s sculpture. The third work mentioned, Jeff in the Position of Adam (1990), is a Koons oil painting.
Koons, often labeled an appropriation artist, is no stranger to being sued; he’s been accused of stealing as far back as 1989. In March, he lost a longstanding legal battle in which he’d been attempting to prove that a sculpture, what coincidentally also depicts snakes, was not, in fact, made by him (a Milan court ruled that it was).
In 2018, Koons was found guilty of plagiarism in a lawsuit that much resembles Hayden’s. Ironically, according to Hayden’s suit, the designer discovered that Koons had been allegedly stealing his work while reading an Italian news article about a lawsuit filed by Cicciolina, the porn performer who appeared in “Made in Heaven,” against Sotheby’s.
