I’ve come across this phenomenon a few times before where the broken, the shredded, the lost and the unfinished in the Arts are acclaimed as much as is the pristine. This week it was a Koons Balloon Dog. An artist-collector wants to buy the broken shards, believing that its story is more interesting than that of the original artwork. It has a ‘really cool story’ opined the would-be buyer as the bits were laid to rest peacefully in a cardboard box awaiting the judgement of the insurance assessor before being purchased for an undisclosed sum. Another patron who noted that the porcelain work should have been better secured was trumped by yet another who commented that the woman who was said to have broken the work ‘did everyone a favour.’ My comment was how dare she when Jeff Koons is the very epitome of a collectible artist no matter which oversized puppy he presents to history.
Artistic merit judgements aside, not only do the broken [Koons, Duchamp] the shredded [Banksy] invite nods of approval but in the case of Duchamp’s Large Glass, the in-transit cracks in the glass actually improved it according to Duchamp, and he should know. In the world of music though it isn’t the broken that assumes parity but the unfinished. Mozart, Schubert, Bruckner, Bartók, Bach and Prokovief all qualify for having died with the half-written score still on the piano. Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony gets a regular airing at concerts. However, unlike in the visual Arts where only restorers get to touch the precious surface of a painting, conductor Johann von Herbeck stepped up and added the final two movements and presented it to the paying public, while composer Lucas Cantor created Beethoven’s 10th symphony from discarded Beethoven fragments using AI. Whether it is worth anything is anyone’s guess.
Having said that though, the most amusing story I’ve seen recently concerned the massive “Untitled” piece, shown at a gallery at the Lotte World Mall in Seoul by JonOne in 2021. Displaying the various tins of paint and tools used by artist to create the work no doubt seemed like a brilliant idea to the organisers anxious to add another layer to the work. What organisers weren’t anticipating was the couple who saw these sundry paint pots and brushes as an invitation to add their own touches. The three dark-green added blotches certainly added to the history but the price…who knows? It was offered at $500,000 originally. There could well be a well-heeled collector looking for a novelty piece for his/her next dinner party and willing to pay over the odds.
The number of destroyed works of art are legion with recent pourings, throwings and splashings by political activists headlining the news. Will these works increase in value or at least remain on par with the auction house pricing because their story is now more interesting with an added unlooked-for chapter to their histories? If this was the Antiques Road Show the slightest blemish would most certainly bring down the worth with no hope of redemption but then again, buyers of antiques welcome a good backstory as much as anyone.
Art collectors however are a class apart. The news report about ‘invisible art by Lana Newstrom [aka radio parodists Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring] was in fact a hoax and the statement supposedly by the afforesaid Lana that ‘Art is about imagination and …….you have to imagine a painting or sculpture is in front of you’ sounded like all Artspeak but people took it seriously and bought one anyway just as patrons still try to explain away John Cage and his 4.33 of silence as the influence of Zen Buddhism. At least Koons still had the bits lying on the floor to mull over, with or without Zen overtones, as opposed to invisibility or silence.
The shattered balloon dog also didn’t seem to bother Koons very much. A similar incident had happened to one of his Balloon Dog sculptures in 2016, when it fell over at the Design Miami fair. ‘It can be replaced, it’s just porcelain.’ he said as he promoted the idea not only of the disposable art object but the factory-led series. If they weren’t retailing at US$40,000 each in the art market no doubt they’d be available on supermarket shelves
In the minds of ordinary people, the art world is populated by fraudsters and tricksters. Vanishing art, bananas and broken porcelain don’t help public perception and while much of this comes down to a lack of understanding on the part of the public, I doubt that the majority of artists appreciate any of this or would seriously want to be associated with it. Perhaps I’m wrong. After all, we rely on the rich to buy art in the first place and whatever is in the mind of the buyer/collector, we accept their eccentricities and motivations. Rumour has it in fact that Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club, who before 2008 had shown no interest in painting or sculpture, recently acquired a Bacon triptych, a Lucian Freud, and a Giacometti and the Russian billionaire part-owner of Arsenal, Alisher Usmanov, bought an entire collection of 450 paintings and works of art collected by the dissident cellist Rostropovic and donated them to an official residence of the Russian President Putin. The Saudi prince who is bidding for ManU may well develop artistic pretentions as well with whatever spare change he has. There was no mention of Koon’s dogs with any of these collectors but underperforming football clubs under foreign management may well be seen as analogous to broken art on the market looking for a new owner.