Last weekend, for the first time since the pandemic, the Art Wynwood art fair in Miami welcomed friends of contemporary art to discover works by established and emerging artists. Yet for one of the artworks, worth $42,000, the fair was already over by the VIP Preview Day.
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Among the exhibitors at Art Wynwood was Bel-Air Fine Art, a contemporary art gallery founded in Geneva in 2004, which today has a total of 16 branches, including one in Miami. At the Bel-Air Fine Art stand, Balloon Dog (Blue) by Jeff Koons, from a limited edition of 799 copies, was shown alongside works by artists such as Cécile Plaisance and Leo Manelli. The copies are now 798, however, because the shiny porcelain dog suffered an unfortunate incident.
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Artist and art collector Stephen Gamson, who witnessed the whole thing, told the Miami Herald that he saw the sculpture fall from its pedestal and end up in a pile of shards. Apparently, a visitor had touched Koon's work earlier, allegedly knocking it off the stand. Representatives of Bel-Air Fine Art took the incident in stride, however, as the $42,000 Ballon Dog was insured. For some, the episode was even welcomed, with reports that collectors have been trying to contact the gallery to buy pieces of the broken sculpture, perhaps trying to replicate the shredded Banksy saga.
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Works of art often live dangerously. There have been repeated incidents in the past where artworks have been unintentionally damaged or even destroyed. In February 2020, for example, an art critic smashed a work by Gabriel Rico at an art fair in Mexico, while six months later a plaster Canova sculpture lost a few toes when a tourist was a little careless in his hunt for the perfect photo.
