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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: 2) by krishnoid on Monday October 08 2018, @02:49AM (3 children)
I'm neither a lawyer nor an auctioneer, but at least under US law [uslegal.com], it seems like it transfers possession when the bidding for the item closes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Monday October 08 2018, @04:46AM
IANAL.
It depends on which country you are in and whether the bidders signed any binding documentation as a condition prior to participating in the auction. This may result in ownership transferring with the hammer. In other scenarios, this is not the case. For example, if one were to roll up to a real-estate auction unannounced and place a winning bid, there is no binding agreement until signatures are put on paper (I saw this happen once).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @12:33PM
I understand the linked text that ownership is transferred at that point. In my understanding, possession is transferred when you get the item.
Possession and ownership are two different concepts; for example if I rent a car, the car is still owned by the renting company, but I possess it during that time.
However IANAL either.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday October 08 2018, @02:23PM
In effect at auction you have a contract for a purchase for an item. A contract requires a meeting of the minds, that the object being bid on would meet specifications to a reasonable and ordinary person. If it was marketed in the auction catalog as something like a "work of art" and knowing the reputation of the artist.... just maybe the bidder is out of luck. If it was marketed as a painting.... no reasonable person would consider a built-in shredder as a normal feature of a painting. There wouldn't have been a true meeting of the minds on what was being purchased and therefore the buyer would not be on the hook for the purchase price. Another theory would be even if the object was sold "as is" its condition changed while Sotheby's was still in possession of the item and therefore Sotheby's cannot deliver what was bid upon and is the liable party from the buyer's perspective.
And if the buyer reneged and if the catalog description of a painting has solid understanding between Sotheby's and Banksy.... Banksy could be the one left on the hook for the full unrealized commission to Sotheby's for fraud. Will that happen? Nope. Could it? Yep.
The whole story reminds me a little of William Gibson's Agrippa: A Book of the Dead [wikipedia.org].
This sig for rent.