“Here’s your chance to own a limited-edition piece by one of the world’s greatest living artists,” the Google Store boldly states of Jeff Koons’s new collaboration with the tech giant, a phone case for the Nexus mobile, in an edition of 6,000, with one of three designs based on Koons’s Gazing Ball series. A steal at $40—it launched the same week Koons’s One Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Spalding Dr. J Silver Series) (1985) fetched at $15.3m at Christie’s in New York—the case activates a video wallpaper by Koons with different scenes based on Balanchine’s Swan Lake ballet, featuring the New York City Ballet dancers Troy Schumacher and Ashley Laracey (and a gazing ball). Koons attended a swanky kickoff for the collaboration at Spring Place in New York on 9 May, complete with blue Gazing Ball cake pops (Koons’s idea) and a live pas-de-deux by Schumacher and Laracey.
