When Is a Jeff Koons Fake Not a Fake?

It’s understandable why you’d want to disassociate yourself from a Jeff Koons sculpture—sensible people do this in droves—but it’s interesting when the disavowal comes from the artist himself, and he’s so determined to put a little distance between Him and It that he’s willing to go to court to do it. Or fail to do it, as the case may be. “An Italian art collector is celebrating a court victory over Jeff Koons after a statue he owned was found to be genuine, despite the American artist originally claiming that it was a fake,” reported The Times of London. “The collector, who has not been named in Italian media reports, bought Serpents 2/3 at a lost property auction in Milan in 1991 for the equivalent of a few hundred pounds.” The man had tried to auction the piece at Christie’s in the 90s, but Koons—whose work has sold for as much as $91 million—denied him a certificate of authenticity.

The tip-off that it was real was right there from the start. According to the newspaper, when the collector brought his purchase home and opened the box, revealing “a porcelain statue 34 inches long representing two cheerful-looking snakes with black and yellow eyes and green bow-ties,” the man’s wife looked at the snakes and said, “It’s them or me.” In other words, a Koons. Think of what they all could have saved on legal fees.