Today’s your last chance to see this giant red balloon dog! As part of art fair Frieze New York, Paul McCarthy created this inflatable dog towering over Frieze’s tent. At 80 feet tall, it’s an interesting nod to Jeff Koons with one critic saying, “I’m not even sure why McCarthy bothered to make the giant balloon dog after Koons had already made his over-sized chrome ones, unless of course McCarthy is making a wry contemporary-art-historical commentary on Koons’ art, but that seems too precious and cerebral. Koons’ dogs were interesting, a tad, because of the change in material, so that what at first looked like a helium filled balloon was actually heavy, and hard as steel. McCarthy returned the dog to its balloon form, but just made it into the Gulliver of all dog balloons.”
Regardless of its implied meaning, isn’t it a wonderfully whimsical piece of art to come across? If Hong Kong gets a duck, why shouldn’t New York have a dog?
First photo credit: NYC: The Official Guide
Photo by John Berens
Photo by Sandra Hamburg
Photo by Arts Observer
Photo by New York Times