Visitor accidentally shatters Jeff Koons 'balloon dog' sculpture | Hacker News Reader

Visitor accidentally shatters Jeff Koons 'balloon dog' sculpture

cnn.com

23 pointsgraderjs54 comments

> a visitor accidentally kicked its podium

In the opening crowded social event how can the sculpture be placed unsecured on a glass table - also, the sculpture had rounded smooth glossy point of contact (dog's legs).

The podium: https://dynaimage.cdn.cnn.com/cnn/q_auto,w_727,c_fit/http%3A...

Oh wow, that would be really easy to accidentally bump into. It's below eye level, invisible... yikes.

The bad thing is whoever kicked the podium must feel terrible.

Why did they put no effort into protecting this piece? Perhaps because they could easily make another one if it came to it. I mean, it's just a ceramic duplicate of an ordinary balloon dog, of which a million or so are made at children's birthday parties.

Note, Koons himself produces work at scale in what he calls a factory and which is ... a factory.

    A total of 799 editions of the sculpture were made.

Ie not a total loss for humanity.

That’s .004%* of an increase in value for the rest of them.

*Completely made up number as I’m not an art valuer, but the point stands.

Clearly the route to infinite value is destroying all of them

There can only be one.

Now I understand better that New Yorker cartoon: “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.”

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

Then I give 1/799th of a shit about this.

Assuming it's totally useless, making 799 of these pricey thingies is certainly a waste.

> The bad thing is whoever kicked the podium must feel terrible

When my children were small, they were terrified to break things in supermarkets. I told them that it is always the supermarket fault when something is not fixed properly.

Of course this is for accidental damage.

That whoever should sue the show for anxiousness /s

Yikes, that's just begging to get knocked over

Could it generate some great publicity and cost nothing?

Also, assuming it is LA, what about earthquakes? Several other sculptures on podiums there...

Think the exhibit was in Miami.

Hurricanes then!

In February?

Opps, saw Bel Air but that is just the gallery name.

Full-sized image: https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/230219130836-01-jeff-...

This is why a substance called "museum wax" was invented.

Similarly as when an individual takes down an unproportionally large part of a process (eg factory worker taking down the entire production line), this is the fault of the gallery that failed to secure the piece properly. Since about 800 of this dog is made, the cynically minded could think this was intentional for some publicity. It was insured, there are people wanting to buy the pieces, etc.

Odd, the article so confidently says it's an accident over and over, but other reports [1] [2] say she touched it on purpose.

Is the owner of the gallery district manager here simply lying for insurance purposes?

[1] https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/oops-woman-accidentally-br...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/arts/jeff-koons-sculpture...

> broke a $42,000 porcelain sculpture by artist Jeff Koons Thursday.

> Herald that Gamson offered to buy the balloon dog’s remains for $15 million on the spot.

Wait, so the broken sculpture is now worth more than before? How does this even make sense.

Money laundering

If they offered the same or double the price I would be still raising my eyebrows a bit but 15M lmao, how blatant is that.

It just went from a one nonspecific sculpture in a run of 799, to an absolutely unique item from that set with a specific historical lineage. The other 798 are no different than each other, but this is the only one among them that had this happen to it. So now it's priced more like his other singular works.

Depending on who you ask, those broken fragments are a one-of-a-kind.

Five quatloos for the tail.

Wow, the art world has literally become a Donald Duck cartoon!

I remember when I was a kid one of my favourite Donald Duck installations was one where Donald accidentally breaks an antique and invaluable vase, and some art people goes crazy for the shards, and so Donald launches a new career as an artist where people bring their Ming dynasty vases to him, and he goes to town on them with power tools.

I don't recall quite how it ends, but I think the trend passes and he's left with a bunch of worthless shards. I think Scrooge was angry for some reason as well...

I liked it at the time because it was such an absurd concept. Guess it wasn't nearly as absurd as I thought!

One other media outlet had fun with this story, labeling it as 'breaking news.' It's not really interesting otherwise.

Fix it with Kintsugi [0] and sell it as a 1 of 1 for a higher price.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

Yeah I was thinking it's probably the idea behind:

> Bel-Air Fine Arts added that some collectors have offered to purchase the broken pieces.

In the article, someone wanted to buy the pieces as-is for $15M..

Why waste time and gold?

For more gold later on? Or the status now. Art is an investment… and I guess Some people have enough gold, but they enjoy other stuff.

I was one in a Jeff Koond exhibit and I must say i don’t get his art.

And I am not opposed contemporary art in general

I love Jeff Koons. I saw a massive show of his at MCA SYDNEY in the late 90s or early 2-thousands. Giant flower puppies and more. I really love his stuff. Makes Some of Takeshi Murakami’s sculptures look derivative.

Not the visitor’s fault. It’s the gallery’s fault for displaying an expensive work of art in such a way that it can easily be damaged accidentally or purposefully.

Well it’s their fault if it’s purposeful…

Sounds like the gallery is 100% responsible and negligent for putting it on such a precarious setting.

If a little foot tap at the base of the stand could do that, and they allowed feet to be near the base of the stand, then it could hardly have been worse if they just left it out front on the sidewalk.

Ah, other comments are illuminating. The thing was mass produced and of little value despite the price tag.

So now the worst job being done is not the gallery for failing to protect something of little value, but Zoe Sottie or CNN for publishing a non-story.

Just one mis-print from the Koons money printer; the world will go on.

Perhaps people should kept at a distance. It happened before with a ball of his:

https://hyperallergic.com/436913/jeff-koons-gazing-ball-dest...

Someone already tried to buy the pieces. "In his post, Gamson said he unsuccessfully tried to purchase what remained of the sculpture. "

What are the odds that the shattered sculpture is displayed and sold as its own distinct piece of art?

The speed at which this is doing the rounds (over a 1/799 piece!) feels like PR for the rest of the run.

I'm actually surprised at the value of this piece seeing that it's fairly famous. Just $42,000, is that a typo?!

I guess it's tiny and there are 700 something of them made.

> Just $42,000, is that a typo?!

Nope. He's made a bunch of different balloon animals, and this particular dog was an edition of a few hundred. You can buy one on Artsy right now if you've got some spare cash lying around: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/jeff-koons-balloon-dog-blue-po...

From the article -

> "This kind of thing unfortunately happens, that is why the artwork was covered by insurance"

They should NFT the shit out of it. Oh wait, that was last year.

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