The contrast could not have been more acute. It came the day after a press release from Christie’s New York pinged into my inbox announcing the forthcoming sale of Jeff Koons’s ‘Balloon Dog (Orange)’ on 12 November. Even by current auction-house standards, the hype was of heroic immoderation but it was the novel brazen pandering that shocked me.
It is a moot point whether Mr Koons’s monumental party balloon — sleekly engineered in high chromium stainless steel and more than three metres long and some three and a half metres high — is indeed ‘the most beloved of all contemporary sculptures’, or whether the auction itself will be a ‘landmark’ event ‘set to make history’. It is presented almost as a foregone conclusion that the sculpture, bearing an estimate of $35 million to $55 million, will eclipse not only the artist’s current auction record but also that set at Sotheby’s in May by Gerhard Richter’s ‘Domplatz, Mailand’ — $37.1 million — to become the most expensive work by a living artist ever sold at auction.
‘Balloon Dog (Orange)’ can, of course, be described quite legitimately as ‘a Pop icon of our age’. Koons’s sculptures, not least the gleaming oversize trophies in his Celebration series, are a perfect reflection — and indictment — of our appearance-obsessed and infantilised age. Their ‘wow’ is one of instant gratification, a response dependent on immediate, pleasurable recognition, unexpected scale, a perfection of surface and exuberant colour. By their very nature, they are banal and superficial.
According to Christie’s usually sensible and estimable Brett Gorvy, ‘Balloon Dog’ is nothing short of ‘the Holy Grail for collectors and foundations’. Then he continues: ‘In private hands, the work has always communicated the prominence and stature of its owner…To own this work immediately positions the buyer alongside the very top collectors in the world and transforms a collection to an unparalleled level of greatness.’
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