![]() ![]() I’m told that someone from Banksy’s publicity team contacted Sotheby’s to sell the painting Girl With a Balloon, but that the consignment came with stipulations, more or less as follows: a. (My source never divulges over the phone.) The scoop? He told me the definitive Banksy story, in its entirety.įirst of all, if the entire prank-with a crude device concealed within the artwork’s ridiculously oversize frame half-slicing-and-dicing the painting onstage as astounded auction specialists looked on-sounds like a giant PR stunt, know that the consigned artwork was inscribed “Thanks, Jo” (with a heart), and Banksy’s PR representative happens to be named Jo Brooks. Until, that is, I got a call from my trusty inside source Deep Pockets, who summoned me to meet him at a bar directly from Heathrow, where I was returning from an artist’s talk I’d given the night before in Cologne. Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.After last week’s welter of breathless reportage surrounding Banksy’s surprise pantsing of the art market at Sotheby’s London, I had made it a pre-New Year’s resolution never to mention the painting-shredding stunt again. They weighed the framed canvas to make sure there were no hidden components and double checked that the batteries had been removed from the shredder. A representative for the museum did not immediately respond to Artnet News’s request for comment about the fate of that deal.Īccording to the Wall Street Journal, Sotheby’s went to great lengths ahead of this sale to make sure Banksy was not planning any additional funny business. The shredded work later went on view at Stuttgart Staatsgalerie, which originally said it would keep it on permanent loan. Love Is in the Bin is arguably Banksy’s most famous work (it’s definitely his most famous work not attached to a wall). During the now-legendary sale in 2018, the image began slipping through a shredder secretly built into the bottom of the frame seconds after the hammer came down.Īlthough there was intense speculation that Sotheby’s was in on the prank-particularly since the work was the final lot of the sale, acting as a sort of culmination-both the artist and auction house insisted Sotheby’s had been kept in the dark. Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s © Bizzy Arnott Sotheby’s dressed up the flag outside its London HQ in honor of Banksy. While an artist like Monet doesn’t have enough material available to enable this kind of glut, Banksy has a robust secondary market for his prints, as well as for his harder-to-come-by paintings. Notably, that total is almost as much as his work has generated at auction in all previous years combined.īanksy’s market success has been driven by a dramatic increase in the volume of his works at auction (it spiked almost 320 percent over the past five years), as well as an increase in the value of his work (his average price has grown 675 percent since 2016). ![]() In the first seven months of the year, his work generated $125.5 million on the block, making him the fifth best-selling artist, according to the Artnet Price Database. His top three auction prices have all been set in 2021. The successful bidder was a collector in Asia, the auction house said.īanksy’s auction market has exploded over the past year. Nine people chased the work for more than 10 minutes, according to Sotheby’s. ![]() It ended up selling for considerably more than that-three times the high estimate and 18 times what she paid for it three years ago. This week, the anonymous buyer of that work, said to be a European woman, put it back on the block at Sotheby’s, where it was expected to fetch between £4 million and £6 million ($5.5 million and $8.2 million). He issued it a new certificate of authenticity and gave it a new name: Love is in the Bin. Mere moments after the original work, Girl With Balloon, sold for a then-record £1 million ($1.4 million), it promptly self-destructed as a shredder hidden inside the frame activated, slicing the bottom half of the picture.īanksy took ownership of the stunt soon after and released a viral video revealing that the work was supposed to shred entirely, but the mechanism malfunctioned during the sale. This riddle only has one answer: Banksy’s Love Is in the Bin (2018), which sold on Thursday evening in London for £18.6 million ($25.4 million), setting a new record for the anonymous street artist.Īlmost three years ago to the day, the work became a global sensation in the same salesroom. Which work of art becomes far more valuable after it is damaged by the artist-whose identity, as it happens, is unknown?
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