A woman at a contemporary art fair in Miami allegedly broke a $42,000 porcelain sculpture on Thursday night.
Artist Jeff Koons’ blue “balloon dog” sculpture dropped to the floor and shattered during the VIP Preview event of Art Wynwood, a fair in its 10th year produced by Art Miami.
Jeff Koons is known for his large and colorful sculptures. His balloon dogs are especially iconic, with five of them created in different colors — magenta, yellow, orange, red, and blue — between 1994 and 2000.
While $42,000 may seem steep, it’s not when compared to some of Koons’ other art sales. In 2013 he sold the much larger orange version of the balloon dog for $58.4 million. His sculpture Rabbit sold for $91.1 million in 2019 — among the highest amounts paid for the work of a living artist in history.
Stephen Gamson, a Wynwood-based artist and collector, told the Miami Herald that when the piece shattered, it drew quite the audience.
“It was like how a car accident draws a huge crowd on the highway,” he said, the Miami Herald reported.
The balloon dog was the star of the show even before the incident, Gamson noted. In fact, he and an older woman seemed to have zeroed in on the artwork at the same time while walking through the exhibit.
However, the moment Gamson pointed out the sculpture to his friend, he saw the woman “tap” it, he said. It was then knocked off its pedestal and shattered loudly.
Gamson was unsure as to why the woman would touch the balloon, but he inferred to the Miami Herald that she might have been trying to see whether the sculpture was a real balloon or not.
While undoubtedly embarrassing, the accident did not trap the woman into footing a $42,000 bill.
Bénédicte Caluch, an art advisor with Bel-Air Fine Art, told the Miami Herald that the artwork was covered by insurance.
Caluch also explained that the woman was an art collector visiting the show. She had no intention of wrecking the work, he said, which was deftly swept up post-accident by the gallery staff.
The Dallas Museum of Art also saw some art pieces destroyed recently. In this case, however, the culprit’s actions were intentional.
A self-described “art junkie,” Gamson immediately asked Caluch if he could buy the broken pieces of the sculpture, the Miami Herald reported.
Caluch jokingly said, “For $15 million? Yea!”
Not all broken art has to be a loss, as the Japanese art of kintsugi demonstrates.
This technique of mending broken pottery through lacquer mixed with gold dust has been around since the 15th century. The appeal lies in the beauty of imperfection, as the golden cracks twist and turn in unpredictable ways.
However, it is doubtful that this is what Gamson had in mind with the balloon dog remnants. As he told the Miami Herald, his focus was more on what the shards would represent.
“I find value in it even when it’s broken … to me, it’s the story. It makes the art even more interesting,” Gamson said.
