Jeff Koons and Centre Pompidou convicted of plagiarism for Naf-Naf ad copy

Jeff Koons, his studio, and the Centre Pompidou have been definitively convicted of plagiarism for the 1988 porcelain sculpture 'Fait d'Hiver,' part of his Banality series. The work was exhibited at Koons' 2014 retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where Frank Davidovici, creative director of the prêt-à-porter brand Naf-Naf, recognized it as a copy of a 1985 Naf-Naf advertisement. The court ordered Koons, his studio, and the Centre Pompidou to pay €190,000 to Davidovici (up from €135,000 in the 2018 appeal), plus €14,000 for reproducing the image on Koons' website. Publisher Flammarion was also fined for selling the exhibition catalog containing the image. Koons' defense argued the work was inspired by the ad but constituted an original artwork with its own artistic message, but the Court of Appeal ruled that similarities predominated. The sculpture, acquired by Fondazione Prada from Christie's New York in 2007 for about £2.8 million, was not confiscated. Three editions plus an artist's proof exist. This is not Koons' first plagiarism conviction: in 2017 (confirmed December 2019), the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris found him guilty of plagiarizing photographer Jean-François Bauret's work 'Enfants' with the porcelain sculpture 'Naked.'