Mark Kostabi is picking up where his fellow artist Jeff Koons left off — by dating Koons’ ex-wife Ilona Staller, the Italian porn star better known as Cicciolina.
Kostabi, 53, who has lived in Rome for several years, told me, “She’s fabulous, beautiful, and so sweet and adorable. When I’m with her I can’t control myself . . . We have not had sex,” he added. “We’ve held hands and had two dinners.”
Staller, 62, was a member of Italy’s parliament (1987 to 1992) and famous for giving speeches with one breast exposed. She made 15 X-rated films, including “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress,” opposite John Holmes. She also offered to have sex with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to bring about world peace.
“My breasts have never done anyone any harm, while bin Laden’s war has caused thousands of victims,” Staller said in 2002.
Kostabi plans to paint 15 portraits of Staller and direct a movie about her life, including her brief 1991 relationship with Koons, 59, who created a series of graphic paintings and life-size sculptures depicting the couple having sex.
That Whitney-commissioned show, “Made in Heaven,” propelled Koons’ career. In November of last year, his “Balloon Dog (Orange)” sold at Christie’s for $58.4 million, a record for a living artist.
Staller and Koons have a son, Ludwig, who is now 22. Staller’s biopic will include their bitter custody fight, which Koons won in 1998 in Manhattan Supreme Court.
By then, though, Staller had already taken Ludwig to Rome, “where the Italian justice system sided with her,” Kostabi said. “She and Koons hate each other.”
Ludwig, who was born in Munich, is nothing like his father, Kostabi said: “She’s Hungarian. Koons is American. And Ludwig is totally Italian. He doesn’t speak English.”