No artist represents talentless hack more then Jeff Koons, so to see him get bitchslapped is a treat.
Koons own style (which also made him a lot of money), which is basically appropriating pop-culture imagery and mass-produced objects, has stretched into a thirty year career. And in that time, he's been sued for copyright violation and appropriating other's images four times, losing three of the cases. Trying to give other a taste of his own medicine, Koons recently went after a gallery and bookend manufacturer who he claimed violated his intellectual property rights. His 10-foot-tall “Balloon Dog” sculpture has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Versailles, and made him think he is the only person ever to come up with the concept.
Last December, a lawyer for Koons sent cease-and-desist letters to Park Life, a San Francisco gallery and store that sells the bookends, and Imm-Living, a Toronto company that manufactures them. Since the dispute was reported, there's been no shortage of folks mocking Koons attempting to claim the rights to all balloon dogs. And the legal opinion in filed briefs didn't shape up much better for the artist: “As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain”.
Koons has of late dropped his legal action against the sale of its balloon dog-shaped bookends. "Jeff Koons and I signed the papers today," said Park Life co-owner Jamie Alexander. "We can sell the balloon dog bookends. The only thing that they wanted to concede is that we couldn't advertise them as being related to Jeff Koons, which we never did." Alexander noted that the store did not agree to a confidentiality agreement about their resolution. "This is a victory for the little guy standing up to a bully. Also, it's about the absurdity of the art world."
Summary judgement? Koons is an asshole!
Koons own style (which also made him a lot of money), which is basically appropriating pop-culture imagery and mass-produced objects, has stretched into a thirty year career. And in that time, he's been sued for copyright violation and appropriating other's images four times, losing three of the cases. Trying to give other a taste of his own medicine, Koons recently went after a gallery and bookend manufacturer who he claimed violated his intellectual property rights. His 10-foot-tall “Balloon Dog” sculpture has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Versailles, and made him think he is the only person ever to come up with the concept.
Last December, a lawyer for Koons sent cease-and-desist letters to Park Life, a San Francisco gallery and store that sells the bookends, and Imm-Living, a Toronto company that manufactures them. Since the dispute was reported, there's been no shortage of folks mocking Koons attempting to claim the rights to all balloon dogs. And the legal opinion in filed briefs didn't shape up much better for the artist: “As virtually any clown can attest, no one owns the idea of making a balloon dog, and the shape created by twisting a balloon into a dog-like form is part of the public domain”.
Koons has of late dropped his legal action against the sale of its balloon dog-shaped bookends. "Jeff Koons and I signed the papers today," said Park Life co-owner Jamie Alexander. "We can sell the balloon dog bookends. The only thing that they wanted to concede is that we couldn't advertise them as being related to Jeff Koons, which we never did." Alexander noted that the store did not agree to a confidentiality agreement about their resolution. "This is a victory for the little guy standing up to a bully. Also, it's about the absurdity of the art world."
Summary judgement? Koons is an asshole!
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