On Board Guilty, the Only Superyacht in the World Recognized as Contemporary Art

In fact, Cypriot art collector Dakis Joannou’s superyacht Guilty is not “artsy” in the basic sense – and not just because every superyacht adheres to certain principles that make it so. Guilty is the only yacht in the world recognized as contemporary art, a floating contemporary masterpiece, and a floating gallery all at once. It is also the biggest and most expensive piece by American artist Jeff Koons, whom you probably know for his extended involvement with BMW art cars.

Guilty is the culmination of a lot of things, including a years-long friendship between Joannou and Koons. It is irreverent, eye-popping, and overwhelming for onlookers, but for Joannou, it remains his most prized possession because it’s the only thing he has that allows him to travel by sea while surrounded by his art.

Delivered in 2008, Guilty was built by Cantieri Navali Rizzardi from Italy, with an exterior and interior design by Ivana Porfiri of Porfiristudio. The pop-art camouflage paintjob is by Jeff Koons, who volunteered to do it for his friend the moment he heard about the idea. At that point, Porfiri had already been working on the design for three full years of a briefing that called for a yacht that would double as an art gallery, where no rules or restrictions applied.

As Joannou himself explained in a 2013 interview, the goal of Guilty was to get the boat of his dreams, controversy be damned. “We did what we wanted; style was irrelevant,” he explained. “We designed a boat in an antistyle method. We have no rules, no programs, no plans.”

They did have a starting point, though. For the exterior, that was the Razzle Dazzle technique of camouflage employed by WWI British ships, which served not to hide vessels from sight but to make their features indiscernible. It’s hiding in plain sight, a ship that you can see clearly, but whose size or specs you can’t make out, so you can’t even guess its purpose. The same happens with Guilty, whose size and apparent sharp edges change depending on the light or the angle.

For the interior, the starting point was a single art piece for each room. The walls and roof are white Corian serving as background for the colorful artpieces and installations, all of which are chosen to match or play off against a single piece that sets the tone. Guilty is packed with works from artists like Koons, Sarah Moris, David Shrigley, or Urs Fischer, all of whom have a close connection to Joannou, who is also their patron.

At 35.3 meters (116 feet), Guilty offers an interior volume of 314 GT spread across three decks; it’s small compared to some of today’s most mediated superyachts but more than enough for an art gallery slash family boat. The layout is non-standard as well: 8-guest accommodation on the lower deck, with 6-crew quarters on the forward part; the wheelhouse on the main deck towards the bow, and a lounge and service area, with a salon located aft; and the upper deck dedicated entirely to the owner’s suite. Accommodation on board is for 10 guests and amenities are scarce – again, by comparison to most superyachts, and not including the generously-sized beach club.

The hull and superstructure are GRP, and power comes from twin MTU 16V 4000M90 engines taking Guilty to a top speed of 29 knots. Pricing for this unusual superyacht was never revealed or hinted at, and it was never offered for charter.

Ask Joannou about it, and he plays it coy, the way you’d expect a multi-millionaire art collector too, though he insists this is not a vanity project he did for bragging rights. “In the art world, someone has to take intellectual responsibility,” he says. “Price? I'm not interested in that. I care about value, something no dealer can add or take away. In the long term, time is the ultimate judge.”