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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: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Sunday October 07 2018, @07:16PM (3 children)
They realize that utilitarian values don't apply to something that isn't utilitarian in nature.
The value of a tool is in how well it conforms to the owner's needs. The value of art is how well it conforms to the artist's vision.
So no, the art self shredding increased it's value. A tool dropping a feature loses value.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07 2018, @11:53PM (1 child)
Tell that to Star Wars fans.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday October 08 2018, @02:34AM
That one is more complicated. It' a case of the artist waffling on his vision.
Banksy clearly had this in mind from the beginning and went through with it as planned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:43AM
WHOA! You just went to a whole knew dimension, BRO!
My mind is like... BLOW AWAY!