Dakis Joannou’s Guilty Pleasure
The Yacht That Koons Designed
As far as nautical luxury goes, it would be hard to outdo Greekbillionaire Dakis Joannou’s “Guilty.” The yacht was built in 2008 byspecialist Cantieri Navali Rizzardi, the Italian company that showed the firstsuperyacht longer than 100 feet at the Cannes International Boat and Yacht Show of 2002 (ownerGianfranco Rizzardi refers to his vessels as the “haute couture” of pleasure boats). With anexterior by Jeff Koons, the 115-foot floating hulk is something of a museum-worthy masterpiece. Koons’s design was inspired by the “dazzle”camouflage of WW1 ships—complex geometric patterns that created opticalillusions to confuse enemy gunners. The interior, designed by Milan’s IvanaPorfiri, is no less wowing, with works by artists such as Martin Creed andSarah Morris, whose text painting Guilty inspired the yacht’s name. In between overseeing his Athens-based, non-profit DESTE Foundation, which has supportednumerous projects since 1983, and liaising with major art world figures (LarryGagosian, Marian Goodman and Maurizio Cattelan all attended the christening of "Guilty"), Dakis Joannou sails his prized boat to his villa in Corfu, where he spent ten days with Koons last summer. When Joannou is in Greece, "Guilty" can often be seen mooredon the island of Hydra—the site of the new DESTE projectspace.