Shat-turd

Accidents do happen. In the case of Marcel Duchamp’s The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare with her Bachelors, Even) it can be a happy and interesting event that adds to the piece. A cracked artwork, the very embodiment of chance that the artist dedicated his oeuvre. Pure DADA, by way of a Brooklyn trucking company.

This week it was widely reported, with more than a fair dollop of glee, that an Art Show in Miami’s Wyndham District was blessed with International attention. It was said, a touchy-feely type of ‘art lover’ had not been satisfied to look, and with a prod, the shiny balloon-shaped sculpture slid off its dedicated plexiglass plinth and shattered.

This misreported accident had gone viral in minutes and translated into a dozen languages to be broadcast louder than the explosion from the toxic plume that seemed to gain less attention. The gallery displaying the shiny canine is Bel-Air Fine Art Contemporary Art Galleries, which may seem an oxymoron. The truth was, due to a stumble at a crowded cocktail party crush, the ‘collector’ didn’t see the invisible box that the ‘artwork’ was precariously perched upon and gave it a swift boot. Valued at $42,000.

Andy and Nico. @Dangerous Minds Photograph Frank Bez

The reason for the attention and its price was the sculpture had been made by that Boy Wonder of the Banal, none other than Jeffery Koons, the heir apparent to Warhol, the Donatello of our age.

Soon to be broken Koons @Jason Jacques Gallery Design Miami 2016

At Design Miami, I was treated to a similar spectacle. I watched a smaller glossy dog applied to a dish leap off its display in the gallery right opposite our setup and shatter.

The poor pup seemed tired of the ceramic gallery Bernardaud’s blinged-out booth and wanted to end it all.

Koons Balloon Dog Design Miami 2016 @ Lauren Prakke Instagram

So what exactly about the smashing of contemporary art piques our interest? It is not sorrow due to the lost legacy of the art, that’s for sure.

This is not something I tend not to concern myself with when producing a damage and loss appraisal. Like some hard-bitten T. V. detective, I just stick to the facts, Ma’am.

Has the art world hoodwinked us so well that we relish its destruction? Our way to endorse a rejection of the once sacred human endeavor that has now been reduced to bartered materialist tokens traded in a glamorous Ponzi scheme.

I once took a beautiful but intentionally damaged Amarna-style carved alabaster head to the head curator of the Ancient Egyptian Dept at Brooklyn Museum. She explained that each new dynasty literally ‘defaced’ sculptures, chipping away the nose and the ears of the previous rulers’ images to rob them of any sacred power they once held.

Has our destructive iconoclastic mindset now become self-sabotaging? Art as an ouroboros monster gorging on its tail, starved of aesthetic nutrition, forced to consume itself? We have entered a time when the tale becomes the real art and the work itself fake.