Banksy Painting Self-Destructs After Fetching $1.4 Million at Sotheby's
The British street artist Banksy pulled off one of his most spectacular pranks on Friday night, when one of his trademark paintings appeared to self-destruct at Sotheby's in London after selling for $1.4 million at auction.
The work, "Girl With Balloon," a 2006 spray paint on canvas, was the last lot of Sotheby's "Frieze Week" evening contemporary art sale. After competition between two telephone bidders, it was hammered down by the auctioneer Oliver Barker for 1 million pounds, more than three times the estimate and a new auction high for a work solely by the artist, according to Sotheby's.
"Then we heard an alarm go off," Morgan Long, the head of art investment at the London-based advisory firm Fine Art Group, who was sitting in the front row of the room, said in an interview on Saturday. "Everyone turned round, and the picture had slipped through its frame." The painting, mounted on a wall close to a row of Sotheby's staff members, had been shredded, or at least partially shredded, by a remote-control mechanism on the back of the frame.
[...] Perhaps the shredded "Girl With Balloon" might eventually also prove a lucrative investment. Banksy pronounced the painting "going, going, gone" on his Instagram account, quoting Picasso: "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge." (The quote is often attributed to Picasso, but also to Mikhail Bakunin, the Russian anarchist who died five years before Picasso was born.) But the painting was neatly shredded and could easily be backed on another canvas by a competent conservator. Thanks to the publicity of this stunt, could the painting now be even more desirable as a piece of auction history?
According to the artist, a shredder was secretly installed into the frame a few years ago in case the painting was ever put up for auction.
"Banksy is an anonymous England-based street artist, vandal, political activist, and film director."
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:00PM (3 children)
They aren't here because it is a hard argument to win if value is added instead of taken away. It wasn't even cross cut. It will be worth more money after this stunt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:05PM (2 children)
But it's not about "worth", it's about ownership and consent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday October 07 2018, @08:50PM (1 child)
Tell that to Google Voice, which bricked our phone with an "update" and had little to say beyond: "oops, sorry, it's out of warranty, would you like to buy a new one?"
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @11:01PM
I don't disagree with you. Any company that sends updates should have a mechanism in place to rollback the updates. No exceptions.
Still, I'm having a hard time seeing a rollback mechanism for that Bansky.