But where aghast visitors saw the loss of a $42,000 art work, Stephen Gamson, an artist and collector who saw the sculpture’s fall, saw an indispensable art piece history. He’s now wishing to include each portion of the smashed “Balloon Dog (Blue)” — a 2021 work that stood a little over a foot high — to a personal collection of ephemera that consists of Roy Lichtenstein’s ruler, Kenny Scharf’s fridge door and “multiple paint brushes from famous artists,” Gamson informed The Washington Post.
“For me, it’s like some kid collecting baseball cards,” Gamson said. “I’m really into it and, when you’re that passionate about it, even broken pieces or damaged pieces have value to you.”
And Gamson isn’t the only one thinking about getting the damaged pieces, according to Bel-Air Fine Art, the modern art gallery providing the sculpture. In a declaration to The Post on Tuesday, the gallery’s district supervisor Cédric Boero said “some collectors offered to buy the shards and we are still receiving offers as we speak.”
Gamson said he understood he’d laid eyes on something unique as quickly as he saw the work atop a transparent pedestal. “Oh look, there’s a Jeff Koons balloon dog,” Gamson said he informed a friend. “And just as I said that, a woman walked close to the stand, and I watched the whole thing shatter.”
The response was a mix of confusion and surprise, he said. Dozens of individuals with appearances of utter shock circled around the metal remains. Others took out their phones to tape the “just unheard of” event, Gamson said. A chorus of “Oh my God!” resounded in the air.
“I can’t believe someone would knock that over,” a male said in a clip of the after-effects shared by Gamson.
“See now, that is the new art installation there … because everything’s art, isn’t it?” a female quipped.
“This is the most popular booth in the whole fair,” another male included.
As employees brushed the porcelain pieces into dustpans, some questioned whether they remained in the middle of a Banksy-influenced trick or a duct-taped banana kind of shenanigan, Gamson said.
The description was much easier: Boero, who was handling the gallery’s cubicle on Thursday, said the sculpture went flying after a female offered its pedestal “unintentionally a little kick.” The loss will be covered by insurance coverage, he included.
“This sort of thing happens,” said Steven Keller, a Florida-based security specialist for museums and cultural websites, “and a lot of times it’s because people are not careful enough and because they can be incredibly naive about art.”
Though outright damage of art work is unusual, Keller said circumstances that produce lower damage are not unprecedented. In his 40 years of dealing with over 950 organizations, Keller said he’s seen individuals turn historical sculptures on their pedestals to take much better selfies or scrub their fingers up and down invaluable work of arts. But even then, museums tend to have systems to safeguard the pieces, while galleries and art fairs normally don’t.
“You can put these pieces inside a vitrine, that would be a solution,” Keller said. “But when something is for sale, they take a chance on it because they don’t want to diminish the spectacular appearance of it to somebody who might be there to buy it.”
Art Wynwood decreased to discuss the event. In a press release, it said the occasion included pieces from 50 global galleries, consisting of Bel-Air Fine Art, which still has listings for an assortment of Koons’s balloon creations, consisting of a monkey, dog and swan.
But even if he won’t get to own a (entire) balloon dog, Gamson still enjoys the included layers of suggesting the fall gave the sculpture. Perhaps, he said, it would even inject some motivation to his own pop art-style pieces.
“Maybe the fact that we can still value [the sculpture] means something good comes out of every bad situation,” Gamson said. “Or maybe the crazy attention this whole thing’s been getting means people will pay more attention to the arts in our country, which really can enhance someone’s life, you know?”
Koons, who in 2019 set a record for the most costly work cost an auction by a living artist, very first conceived balloons as art for his 1994 “Celebration” series. The blowup animals, which are shown in tones of magenta, blue, red, orange and yellow, are “eternally optimistic” and agent of mankind, Koons said in 2014. But they’ve been harmed in the past — and likewise discovered brand-new life.
After another balloon dog was shattered in 2008, it ended up being a function at the taking a trip museum Salvage Art Institute, which has a stock of harmed art work. When The Post in 2013 asked the artist whether damaged art can still be ideal, Koons said: “You can find a hierarchy of the significance of different things, but not of value, of being. Everything is perfect for what it is.”
Now the world has one less balloon dog. Boero said the just recently shattered one, which belonged to a series of 799, is sitting inside a box, waiting for an insurance provider’s evaluation to pass to its next owner.
