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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 JoeMerchant on Sunday October 07 2018, @08:39PM (2 children)
Arguably, this piece of art made a groundbreaking statement and is now worth far more than it was last auctioned for.
The girl and the balloon were rather simplistic and certainly have been digitally recorded and can be reproduced in exquisite detail by virtually anyone at any time. The hidden shredder in the frame and its historic activation at auction? Priceless.
Frankly, I'm astounded that the previous owner was oblivious to the presence of the shredder.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:44PM (1 child)
We don't really know that. According to the article, the previous owner bought the painting from Banksy privately. Given that Banksy hides his identity really well, this suggests that the previous owner has quite close connection to Banksy. Which makes it not unlikely that he was informed about the shredder.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @03:24PM
Not necessarily, it would still be a private sale if done through an intermediary.