Koons’ Balloon Meets Buffoon
I Smashed Jeff Koons’ $61 000 Porcelain Balloon Dog
I am precisely one year’s salary sorry
“The artist Jeff Koons’ famous sculptures might look like they’re made from balloons — but the works are actually fragile, as one art fair attendee found out when [he] knocked over a $42,000 (A$61,170) piece Thursday, causing it to shatter.”
My missus started all the trouble.
“Let’s go to an art show!”
An art show?
Those hoity-toity affairs where they serve cheese cubes on toothpicks? Those ostentatious evenings where a gaggle of self-assumed connoisseurs rattle off the same two artsy anecdotes they’ve been telling back and forth for fifteen years?
Those stuffy social events where I pinch my thighs through my pockets to stay awake until finally, we have to leave because my cheese-loving-yet-lactose-intolerant spouse has gotten into the Camembert again, and is five minutes away from recreating Jackson Pollock in the one and only washroom?
“Oh, I’d be delighted to go!” I said, with a big phony exclamation mark and everything.
It was cocktail hour at the Bel Air Art Gallery, and it was every bit the pompous congress I expected. Men and women — and one grotesque creature that looked like a three-hundred-year-old bald cyprus tree — standing around with tiny cognacs in plastic cups, holding them as uncomfortably as if they were holding a cup of their own urine at the doctor’s office.
Everyone was whispering for absolutely no reason.
“Splendid exhibition.” “Better than that awful Banksy we saw last month.” “Did you know that Banksy put his own work up at the Tate?”
“Fascinating! I do a little bit of work on my taint myself!” I said.
Alas, I forgot to whisper.
After being forcibly removed from my first attempt at conversation, I was ushered into a new room. The people in this new room were also self-important, but they remained blissfully ignorant of my personal hygiene habits.
“I say, Starry Night is all the more incredible when you think that Van Gogh painted it while interned at a psych ward,” said some art boor in an ascot.
“That’s nothing,” I interjected. “Did you know that Banksy once stuck his own work up at the Tate?”
“How engrossing. What was the piece called?”
“Oh dear, look at the time!” I said, as I grabbed seven cheese cubes and scurried to the next huddle of moneyed humans.
After an excruciating six minutes, I was as bored as I’ve ever been. My eyes glazed over the room until I caught sight of someone who seemed to be having an even more atrocious time than me.
It was a small boy, wedged between the ages of three and sixteen. He was sitting with his back against the wall, his limbs splayed; succumbing to gravity the way only bored boys and the comatose can.
I felt sorry for him.
The poor devil had surely been dragged to this stuffy soiree by a pair of inconsiderate parents. Or perhaps he was kidnapped by an art lover and this was a brief stopover on his way to the human trafficking den.
Either way, he needed a bit of cheering up. That’s when I spotted the balloon dog, and I immediately knew what to do.
“Hey, kid? Catch!”
Did I pick up an expensive porcelain sculpture crafted by a world-renowned artist and throw it across a room in the direction of a small child? Yes, indeed I did.
BUT!
1)It was advertised as a balloon, and children love balloons. 2) Balloons are supposed to be filled with air, and therefore, float. 3) Who in their right mind would ever let a spontaneous, joyful soul such as myself into an art gallery in the first place? And: 4) I was left unsupervised by my wife. So it’s her fault.
The tone of those gathered in the gallery shifted from mildly congenial, to something more like . . . well, do you remember that scene from Return of the Jedi where the Ewoks tie up Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and prepare to roast them over a fire?
“That cost $61 000 dollars!” the head snob said. Her exclamation mark seemed distinctly less phony than mine.
“Not to worry,” I assured the uppity nudniks. “I’ll write an article on Medium about this, and donate the proceedings to the gallery. We’ll be square up in no time!”
So please, like/share/follow and e-transfer me whatever you can, and stay tuned next week for my piece on the Top Ten Unexpected Benefits of Debtor’s Prison.
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