The fact that Ilona Staller is especially fascinated by the paintings of Salvador Dalí seems fitting. Few can rival her when it comes to living the surreal life. Porn star, singer, mother, member of Italian parliament, tabloid news fodder, secret agent, muse—these are just a handful of labels that have been attached to Staller, known to many as La Cicciolina, throughout her storied career. To the international cultural set, she is best known for her brief but impactful turn as a lightning rod for the art world she says she has always loved.
Staller’s affair with the industrty stretches back to 1989, when Jeff Koons—one of America’s most recognizable artists—created a New York billboard advertising a fictitious film entitled Made In Heaven starring himself and La Cicciolina, his soon-to-be-wife. Koons appears fully nude, leaning over Staller, who is scantily clad in white lingerie and lying with her head back in apparent ecstasy.
Koons had been invited by the Whitney Museum to create the billboard as part of an exhibition that explored the relationship between art and the media. His contribution ended up spawning a series of works that eventually debuted at the 1990 Venice Biennale: paintings, photographs, and glass sculptures depicting the couple in flagrante delicto—with absolutely nothing left to the imagination.
For a then-floundering Koons, the headline-grabbing project was something of a comeback, boosting his profile internationally and reinstating him at the center of contemporary art discourse. “He used to tell me at the time that he was famous in the U.S. but wanted to be so in Europe too,” Staller told me over the phone from her home in Rome (she is averse to appearing on Zoom, I’m told—unless she’s paid). “And with me, he became just this.”
This month, Staller is back in the headlines for the re-release of Memorie, a book of photos and anecdotes from her extraordinary life. The limited edition tome was originally published in 2002 and is making its comeback, she says, in response to demand from fans. The content of the book, like the events of Staller’s life, is remarkably varied—photos of her state visit to Japan as a sitting member of parliament are followed by snaps of her performing a risqué striptease in Israel.
The republication of Memorie may prompt a broader re-evaluation of La Cicciolina. Where some past generations have looked down on her as a harlot, an exhibitionist, or a diva, a post-MeToo, post-woke society could just as easily hail her as a feminist icon or the victim of an opportunist artist. But whilst she says she has always considered herself a feminist, Staller maintains that La Cicciolina is no victim. “I absolutely never felt taken advantage of by Jeff Koons,” she tells me. On the contrary, Staller sees herself very much as an artist in her own right, and an equal collaborator in Made in Heaven. “It was more of an economic issue in the sense that [Koons] never paid me what he should have done for my collaboration,” she says. “But hey…”
Every copy of Memorie sold on her official website (priced at a cool €100) will be signed with a personalized dedication and a genuine lipstick kiss from La Cicciolina herself. She is also working on adapting her story for the big screen. The biopic would cover everything from her early days in Hungary, including her time spent working for the Hungarian secret service, to her glory days in porn, politics, art and beyond.
Staller first burst onto the scene in the 1970s as the host of a revolutionary-for-its-time late night sex-chat radio show. (That’s where she conceived her own nickname, which has been roughly translated to everything from “the little plump one” to “little sweetie.” Staller, who coined the word, says Cicciolina simply represents “love.”)
She continued to push the boundaries of Italian society as both the first woman to appear nude in a public place and the first to bare her breasts on national television. A career in soft porn followed, which swiftly became hard porn, with La Cicciolina becoming a sex positive icon in a profoundly conservative country. (Divorce and abortion only became legal in Italy in the 1970s.)
It was during her tenure as a glamour girl that Marco Pannella, leader of the Radical Party, tapped her to run for parliament in 1987. Although many interpreted the move as a publicity stunt by the party, Staller comfortably won her seat, making her the first porn star to take a position in government. She served a four-year term, using her platform to campaign for sex education in schools, prisoners’ rights to have sex, and the fight against HIV. She proposed bills to ban animal testing and the manufacturing and sale of fur, establish an ecological tax on motor vehicles, and lobbied for sex work to be legalized. She also claimed parliamentary immunity after violating the Modesty Act by performing a sex show that incorporated her pet python.
It was around this time that she received a fax from an American artist that would temporarily upend her world. Koons first encountered Staller, according to a 1991Vanity Fair profile on the couple, in 1989 on the cover of Stern magazine, and then later in an adult magazine he spotted in a service station in Italy. “When I looked inside I realized this was one of the greatest artists alive. She was able to present herself with absolutely no guilt and no shame,” he said back then. He likened her platinum blonde hair and jet black eyebrows to Warhol’s wig or Dalí’s signature moustache.
After initiating contact via fax, Koons traveled to Milan to see one of her shows. Backstage, the artist’s charm managed to overcome the language barrier and Staller agreed to pose for the photos that would eventually become the Made In Heaven billboard. (She was paid her hourly rate as a model.) Designed to blur the lines between art and pornography and pose the question of what exactly constitutes art, the series has split opinion since its debut. Yet Koons’s solo exhibition of the works in New York in 1991 saw lines snaking around the block, with scores of viewers desperate for a peek at the newly christened Adam and Eve of contemporary art.
Although their relationship was rocky, Staller says she has always maintained pride in her role in Made in Heaven and rejects the notion that the works are anything but “pure art.” The couple’s marriage fell apart after two and a half years and the birth of their son, Ludwig. A bitter custody battle ensued, with Koons accusing Staller of international child abduction after she flew with Ludwig back to Italy despite a court order stating the child should remain in his father’s care. After nearly 15 years in court and with Ludwig nearing adulthood, Staller ultimately triumphed in the case. The victory was particularly impressive because, as her lawyer Luca Di Carlo (who goes by the nickname The Devil’s Advocate) points out to me over email: “I got her acquitted despite her having committed the crime.” These days, Ludwig, 31, resides in New York, where he works with his father as a contemporary artist. Having released a collection of NFTs inspired by some of Koons’s most iconic works in 2022, he is currently developing an exhibition of his own, Staller tells me with pride.
As recently as 2019, several European publications reported that Staller had filed a $21 million lawsuit against Sotheby’s over the sale of works from Made in Heaven, claiming Koons did not have permission to use her image and Sotheby’s had no right to circulate it. When I asked about this, I’m told she cannot comment on it. In a statement, Di Carlo suggests the lawsuit has not yet been filed but their intention is now to seek $50 million. “I’ll never regret it and I don't know if he does, but he earned a load of money from the works that feature my name,” Staller laments.
As for what the future holds, Staller remains as unpredictable as ever. Now 73, she does not rule out a return to politics. She would even go as far as to offer her services to Russian President Vladimir Putin, just as she had previously offered to sleep with Saddam Hussein while in office in exchange for his cooperation in establishing peace in the Middle East. “I would spend a night of sex with Putin to finally sign an agreement for world peace for life that none of the big leaders in the world would be able to negate,” she tells me.
After spending well over a decade in a legal battle against Koons to keep their son in Italy, she says she would quite like to move back to the United States, which she found “fascinating.” She adds, perhaps shattering her chances at a post-MeToo hero arc, that she’s also a fan of Trump. “During his election campaign, he said that if he became President, wars will end and there will be peace all over the world. So viva Trump, viva!” she says.
In order to return to the States, she would need to overcome one major hurdle—she remains under an international arrest warrant, which was issued after she took Ludwig back to Italy. Di Carlo tells me he has written to Trump himself, with whom he says he shares a “great friendship,” to request that the warrant be revoked.
In the aforementioned Vanity Fair profile, artist Peter Halley compared Koons to a modern Salvador Dalí—which, the journalist points out, would make Staller the new Gala Dalí, a consummate muse. But it seems to me that Staller is her own muse: “La Cicciolina is immortal and an eternal virgin. This is the character that I love,” she says. Perhaps her next step into the world of cinema will prove that nobody can direct her character quite like she can. Stranger things, certainly in her life, have happened.
