FLOAT 100 · Art · No. 66
Balloon Dog (Blue)
Jeff Koons shrank his ten-foot steel Balloon Dog into 799 porcelain sculptures from Limoges, and the world learned how fragile they are when one was nudged off its pedestal at a Miami art fair and burst into a thousand blue shards.
- Year
- 2021
- Maker
- Jeff Koons
- By price in art
- 69 of 100
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Create a free account- Artist
- Jeff Koons (born York, Pennsylvania)
- Title
- Balloon Dog (Blue)
- Date
- 2021
- Medium
- Glazed porcelain
- Size
- About 40 x 15 x 49 cm (15 5/8 x 5 7/8 x 19 1/8 in)
- Edition
- 799
- Maker and publisher
- Bernardaud, Limoges, France
- Markings
- Printed signature, title, date and number on the underside
- Retail price
- $42,000 from the publisher
- Recent auction results
- $25,400 (January 2025) and $26,670 (May 2025)
From ten feet of steel to Limoges porcelain
Balloon Dog began as one of the defining sculptures of Jeff Koons's Celebration series. Made between 1994 and 2000, the original is polished stainless steel with colored coatings, about 307 by 363 by 114 centimeters, in five versions: blue, magenta, yellow, orange and red. Koons has said he likes balloon animals 'because they're like us.'
The porcelain edition is a scaled-down homage to that monument. Its publisher, the Limoges porcelain house Bernardaud, describes it as recreating a balloon twisted into the shape of a dog, an object that stands for life's fleeting pleasures, rendered permanent. The edition of 799 was launched with an event at the company's New York flagship store on November 15, 2021, attended by Koons.
Each dog is about 40 centimeters tall and 49 centimeters long, a substantial object rather than a tabletop trinket. Its color matches the steel Balloon Dog (Blue), which belongs to the Broad museum in Los Angeles.
The artist
Koons grew up in York, Pennsylvania. His father was a furniture dealer and decorator and his mother a seamstress, and by the age of eight he was copying Old Master paintings that were sold in his father's shop. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and briefly at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
He made his name in the 1980s with the Equilibrium series of basketballs floating in tanks, the Luxury and Degradation series, and then Banality, which included Michael Jackson and Bubbles. In 2013 Balloon Dog (Orange) sold at auction for $58.4 million, at the time a record for a living artist. A major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art followed in 2014.
Koons's work is built on the line between art and commerce, which is part of why a 799-piece porcelain edition sold through a tableware company fits his project so well.
The day one broke
On February 16, 2023, during the VIP preview of the Art Wynwood fair in Miami, a Balloon Dog (Blue) from this edition stood on a clear pedestal at a gallery booth with a $42,000 price tag. During the opening cocktail hour, a collector accidentally kicked the pedestal. The dog fell and, in the words of one witness, 'shattered into a thousand pieces.'
The booth manager said the woman never touched the sculpture with her hands, that she was mortified, and that the piece was insured. Fair staff swept up the fragments and boxed them for the insurance assessor. Within days, collectors were offering to buy the shards; one artist argued the broken dog's story was more interesting than the intact one.
The manager also said the same edition had been valued at about $24,000 a year earlier, and that its price had risen as other versions sold out.
Retail versus resale
Bernardaud still lists the edition of 799 at $42,000. At auction, the dogs have recently sold for less. Number 154/799, which came with its original foam-lined box and Bernardaud certificate and had passed through a Swiss gallery, sold in January 2025 for $25,400 against an estimate of $20,000 to $30,000. Number 511/799 sold in Los Angeles in May 2025 for $26,670 against the same estimate.
Because 799 examples exist, the box, certificate and condition matter more than the number. A dog that has been repaired, or one without its packaging, is a different proposition from a complete example.
How to identify one
Genuine examples carry a printed signature, title, date and edition number on the underside, reading in the form 'Jeff Koons Balloon Dog (Blue) Limited Edition/Fine Porcelain 154/799 '21.' They were sold in a Styrofoam-lined box with a Bernardaud certificate of authenticity.
Measurements are given slightly differently from source to source, from 39 x 15 x 49 cm to 15.8 x 40 x 48 cm, depending on how height, width and depth are listed. Check that the color, the date on the base and the edition size match: this is the 2021 blue dog in an edition of 799.
The numbers
- Medium
- Glazed porcelain
- Dimensions
- About 40 x 15 x 49 cm (15 5/8 x 5 7/8 x 19 1/8 in); sources vary by about 1 cm
- Edition size
- 799
- Publisher
- Bernardaud, Limoges, France
- Markings
- Printed signature, title, date and number on the underside
- Related monument
- Balloon Dog (Blue), 1994-2000, stainless steel, collection of the Broad, Los Angeles
Timeline
Koons begins the stainless steel Balloon Dog sculptures, completed in 2000 in five colors.
Balloon Dog (Orange) sells at auction for $58.4 million.
The Whitney Museum of American Art holds a Koons retrospective.
Bernardaud produces Balloon Dog (Blue) in porcelain in an edition of 799.
Koons attends the launch of Balloon Dog (Blue) at Bernardaud's New York flagship.
A Balloon Dog (Blue) priced at $42,000 is knocked off its pedestal and shattered at Art Wynwood in Miami.
Number 154/799 sells at auction for $25,400.
Number 511/799 sells at auction in Los Angeles for $26,670.
The world in 2021
Supporters of President Trump attack the U.S. Capitol.
Myanmar's military removes Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup.
The container ship Ever Given blocks the Suez Canal for six days.
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter makes the first powered flight on another planet.
The postponed 2020 Summer Olympics are held in Tokyo.
The Taliban capture Kabul.
Price record
| Date | Price | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 16, 2023 | $42,000 | Asking price, not a saleGallery price on the example shattered at Art Wynwood in Miami. |
| Jan 29, 2025 | $25,400 | Sold at auctionNumber 154/799, with box and certificate; estimate $20,000-$30,000. |
| May 13, 2025 | $26,670 | Sold at auctionNumber 511/799, Los Angeles; estimate $20,000-$30,000. |
| Oct 3, 2026 | $42,000 | Asking price, not a salePublisher's retail price for the edition of 799. |
A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.
By reference price, Balloon Dog (Blue) is number 69 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (66 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.
Did you know
- The Balloon Dog (Blue) that shattered in Miami fell because a visitor's foot bumped its pedestal; she never touched it.
- After it broke, collectors made offers for the shards.
- The steel Balloon Dog that inspired it is more than 3 meters tall; the porcelain version is about 40 centimeters.
- As a boy, Koons made copies of Old Master paintings that were sold in his father's furniture shop.
- The steel Balloon Dog has appeared in Grand Theft Auto Online and in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
How this page is made
- The figure
- One reference price, shown with its own kind. FLOAT does not average it with anything or adjust it for time.
- Realized or not
- A realized price is a completed sale. An asking price, an estimate and a price-guide value are not sales, and are labeled as such wherever they appear.
- The story
- Researched from published records and checked fact by fact. Updated Oct 3, 2026.
- Archive
- Oct 5, 2026