The American plastic artist Jeff Koons was convicted Tuesday on appeal in Paris for "
forgery
", for having copied an advertisement from the French brand of women's ready-to-wear Naf-Naf in a sculpture exhibited in Paris in 2014. The court of ' appeal confirmed the judgment of the Paris court of November 2018, by increasing the damages awarded to the advertiser Franck Davidovici, designer of the visual
Fait d'
Hiver for Naf-Naf in 1985, on which appeared a woman and a pig.
Read also: Jeff Koons sentenced for counterfeiting the Naf-Naf brand pig
The Court of Appeal also prohibited the artist from exhibiting this 1988 porcelain sculpture which bears the same name and from reproducing it, in particular on the internet, under penalty of 600 euros per day, from one month after the decision.
Jeff Koons, but also the company of which he is the manager and the Center Georges Pompidou, which had exhibited the work during a retrospective, were ordered to pay jointly and severally 190,000 euros in damages - against 135,000 in the first instance.
The company was also ordered to pay 14,000 euros for reproducing the sculpture on the artist's website (11,000 euros in 2018).
In this litigation, the counsel of Jeff Koons had disputed any counterfeiting, recognizing an inspiration but supporting in particular to have created a "
work of art in its own right, which bears the imprint of the personality of its author and carrying an artistic message. which is unique to it
”.
In its judgment, the Court of Appeal confirmed that Franck Davidovici was indeed the author of the "
original
" work, considering that, if there are "
differences
", the "
similarities are predominant here
".
Already sentenced in 2019
The court also rejected the exception of parody and the plea based on freedom of artistic expression invoked by the plastic surgeon.
"
The judges condemn the approach of Koons
" by "
noting that he did not present this work as a critical work, a caricature or inspired by a pre-existing work
", estimated Franck Davidovici's lawyer, Jean Aittouares.
He also welcomed the fact that despite "
the considerable judicial engineering deployed
" by the artist, the French justice "
passed
" and this, by "
protecting
" this advertising work "
as it would have protected another work
".
Read also: Jeff Koons, the cost of the rabbit
Contacted, Jeff Koons' lawyer did not wish to react on Tuesday.
He has the possibility of appealing in cassation.
This condemnation comes on top of others for the controversial star of contemporary art, one of the most highly rated artists in the world, who has often defended an approach of “
appropriation
” in his work.
In December 2019, the same court confirmed the conviction of the company Jeff Koons LLC for having counterfeited a photo by French photographer Jean-François Bauret, this time for the
Naked
sculpture
.
He was also convicted in the United States for "
plagiarism
".