jeff koons found guilty of plagiarising french ad with multi-million-pound sculpture

a french judge has found jeff koons guilty of plagiarism after copying an idea from a surreal 1980s ad campaign for french clothing brand naf naf. the court has fined the artist along with the museum which exhibited the contested work depicting a piglet and a freezing model.

image courtesy of christie’s

header image courtesy of @kelexpo / twitter

franck davidovici, a french advertising executive, sued koons for plagiarism over koons’ ‘fait d’hiver‘ from 1988, a porcelain sculpture depicting a similar scene to his 1985 campaign for naf naf. the women’s ready-to-wear label featured a pig with a cask of brandy around its neck beside a freezing model, a scene replicated by koons. according to artnet davidovici asked for €300,000 ($352,000) in damages and for koons’s sculpture to be seized by the state.

franck davidovici’s ‘fait d’hiver’ ad campaign for naf naf (1985)

the artist, his business, and the french museum have been ordered to pay davidovici a total of €135,000 ($153,000) in compensation. jeff koons LLC was also fined €11,000 for reproducing the pig on koons’s website, and a publishing house that sold a book in which the work was reproduced, was fined €2,000. the court has not ordered the seizure of the artwork, which was bought by the prada foundation for around $3.7 million (£2.8m) at christie’s in new york in 2007.