Identifying as worth $42k
Art lovers in Miami looked on in horror on Thursday night, when a collector accidentally knocked a $42,000 (£34,870) sculpture by US pop artist Jeff Koons to the ground.
Oh no, $42,000 gone, just like that!
The statue – one of Koons’ iconic Dog Balloons – smashed into tiny shards, and had to be swept into dustpans by gallery staff.
…
Luckily for the woman, the piece is covered by insurance, Bénédicte Caluch, an art advisor with Bel-Air Fine Art galleries which represents the sculpture, said.
Whew, that’s a relief!
But what I want to know is, in what sense was the piece actually “worth” 42k?
In the sense that someone might be willing to pay that for it, and the sense that Koons and/or people who market his work think people will be willing to pay that for it.
Fortunately however there are lots of them, and I daresay Koons could just whip up another one, or a dozen more, if he thought there weren’t enough now.
The sculpture was part of a limited edition which has now shrunk from 799 to 798.
A limited edition. What’s a limited edition? A device to drive the price up.
“That’s a good thing for the collectors,” Mr Boero told the Times, laughing.
Hahaha yeah. So really this is a happy story!
All the more so because hey, people want to buy the smashed balloon dog.
Despite [its] being shattered into thousands of pieces, there is still interest in buying the destroyed sculpture.
Mr Gamson offered to buy it there and then because, as he said on his Instagram account, “it has a really cool story”.
Will the insurance company still have to shell out 42k?
I suppose that’s the thing about monetary value – it’s whatever the seller and potential buyers agree it is, particularly objects which aren’t necessary for living.
“I daresay Koons could just whip up another one”
You mean, one of Koons’ underpaid assistants could whip up another one. Koons himself is much, much too important to actually do the work of producing one of his banal, moronic pieces of crap.
As part of my rusty bachelor’s degree in media studies from back in the late 1990s I took a course in (very abstract) modern art. And I actually enjoyed it a lot, not least because we had a really good lecturer who knew how to make the subject interesting. Still, I did get him to admit that one particular – supposedly priceless – work of art we were discussing would be utterly worthless if you or I (or anyone non-famous) had made it, even if the actual item itself had been identical down to the atom.
Apparently it’s an icon, so I suppose that makes her an iconoclast. Of course any decent party clown could make one of those in half a minute. I guess it’s the glass that drives up the price.
It’s like cryptocurrency, a social construct (aka a racket).
I have completely forgotten the artist’s name (heard long ago on NPR) but Wossname was a sufficiently successful painter to acquire a large estate in the country and threw a huge party in celebration. Worried of long lines at the loos in the house he noticed that the estate also had an outhouse, a fine three-holer. He replaced the old seat with a new one which he decorated by painting around the holes. Presumably the party occurred and all had a good time.
Eventually someone else acquired the estate and the splendid three-holer. The buyer tried flogging the painted seat as an original Wossname for the prices his paintings might command. No one bought it, figuratively and literally. The estate-buyer insisted it was no less by Wossname’s hand as any of his other paintings. While true most felt that it was like claiming a famous writer’s hastily dashed-off shopping list was no less publication-worthy than a carefully crafted novel.
I think it’s hilarious to see how people who have money to burn get in to pissing contests with each other about who’s more cultured. I guess the insurance outfit lost that particular battle.
Well, since I had never previously heard of Mr. Koons or his sculptures, I decided that I really ought to do an online search. With some trepidation, because ‘Jeff Koons Dog Balloons’ sounds rather suspect.
They’re just balloon dogs, but made of glass and air instead of rubber and air. Not worth sixpence in my estimate, but what do I know?
This story reminds of Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing, but with none of the thought or self referentiality.
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.298/
I have in recent years been struck by how all-fired important it seems to people that a value be attached to a work of art or a historical artifact. Discoveries of ancient animal bones or prehistoric human tools are so often described in monetary terms.
The local art museum has a standing exhibit of glass art, and they often have temporary exhibits of glass works. I like glass works, and I’ve found the occasional video about how they are produced quite interesting. One particular exhibit took up multiple rooms, and a museum employee took it upon himself to act as a guide for me and my wife, as well as a trio of adolescent boys. I thought the art was lovely. One of the boys kept asking how much this or that was worth; the guide was a bit taken aback, and answered in some noncommittal way. I thought, is there nothing this boy gets out of this exhibit other than how expensive it is?
And people think the value is intrinsic, rather than just some negotiated purchase price. One can buy, say, a serving plate, and it’s one price, but if that serving plate used to belong to Famous Person, there might be more competition for that specific plate, and the price is higher.
So by that token I don’t have objections to high prices for art work from Famous Artist that you or I could have created. You or I could have bought that serving plate, but the association with Famous Person is what drives the price up. The price is not an assessment of artistic merit.
I guess what bothers me about the article is that the feature that they choose to call out in the very beginning is some supposed monetary value. Imagine if they left out talk of the value. An iconic sculpture, one of a series of nearly 800, by a well-respected artist, has been destroyed. Isn’t that enough?
Imagine a house, full of artifacts and memories, that is burned to the ground. Insurance might pay to build another house, but the house is still gone. Imagine a car that you’ve lovingly maintained and driven for a great many miles, and it means a lot to you, and it is destroyed in a crash. Again, you can buy another similar one, but that’s not the point. Imagine a pet that dies; they are not replaceable, even though you can get new pets. Money isn’t always the important part.
But how iconic is the sculpture really? Especially the particular balloon dog as opposed to the concept?
It’s a witty thing, to make glass balloon dogs, but more than that…not so clear.
They are iconic in that Koons made them, he is well known for having made them, and they are popular. I don’t think that “iconic” implies that I, personally, have to like them or find them of merit, just that other people do like them and associate them strongly with him.
That said, I do like the concept of making glass objects that appear to be made out of something else; I’ve seen that done well in other instances, and I think Koons does this with various artworks that look like balloons. I wouldn’t run out to an exhibit of his work, but I think he has done something interesting here.
prov•e•nance (prŏv′-ə-nəns, -näns′)
n.
The history of the ownership of an object, especially when documented or authenticated. Used of artworks, antiques, and books. A really cool story.
“it has a really cool story”. – it fell off a pedestal. Amazing.
There is a famous painting called “Erased DeKooning” where Robert Rauschenberger literally erased a drawing by Willem de Kooning and it now hangs in a museum.
If they sweep up the pieces and place them on a pedestal, they could call it something like “Fractured Koons” and triple the value.
Most importantly, it was mentioned in the news! And on social media!!
Now, if someone with more glue than talent tried to put it back together, it could join the ranks of these restored masterpieces: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53141755
It would make the news, and social media- again – thus increasing its value further. I can invision a whole cycle of repeated destruction/notoriety/restoration/notoriety/destruction…until we are dealling with a bag of atomic, ceramic vapour with a really cool story that is now worth billions.* At this point the vapour could be used to blow up…..You guessed it: a balloon dog..
*Probaby not what Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva really had in mind when they set the Universe into motion, but oh well.
It’s the only broken one. It’s now one of a kind.
Well that’s an easy fix…
In a pathetic attempt to make a sleepy, baking hot political town “world class”, the City of Sacramento paid EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS for a bigger, unique version of a Koons balloon animal. EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS. It looks rather pathetic, even visually lost, actually, in the little plaza next to the gleaming, hulking sports ball palace the City subsidized next to it.
This is a City with endemic gun violence, mediocre schools, and 9,000 homeless people in encampments that have scarred the flagship riverside park. EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS. Even if the money was all donated, this seems so ludicrous…almost infuriating to me.
How is Koons any different from the ridiculous NFT nonsense?