Banksy Artwork Self-Destructs At Auction Right After Being Sold For $1.3 Million (cbsnews.com)

OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: Elusive street artist Banksy's famous "Girl With Balloon" artwork was on sale at a Sotheby's auction in New York inside what looked like a normal, if slightly old fashioned painting frame. As soon as the auction concluded — the artwork was sold to a bidder for a cool $1.3 Million — a whirring noise started coming from the artwork hanging on the wall, and "Girl With Ballon" started moving down inside its frame, coming out the bottom of the frame in shredded strips. In what must be an art world first, the artwork suddenly self-shredded in front of hundreds of stunned auction attendants. It appears that — somehow — Banksy or some other prankster installed a battery powered paper shredding mechanism in the bottom of the artwork's frame that can be remotely triggered. In a tweet on his Twitter account, Banksy posted an image of the destructed artwork and wrote "Going, gone, gone...", potentially mocking the practice of auctioning famous artworks off for large sums of money. The question now is precisely what — if anything — the buyer of the artwork gets for his or her money, and whether "Girl With Balloon" is worth more or less than before now.

Comments

Art experts say it is worth 2x shredded

[JoeyRox]

Which tells you everything you need to know about how specious and capricious the valuation model is for the art market.

Re:Art experts say it is worth 2x shredded

[Anonymous Coward]

Which tells you everything you need to know about how specious and capricious the valuation model is for the art market.

Capricious yes, specious not entirely. Art is about things like communicating ideas and finding new ways to express them. I can't see much that is newer art than doubling the value of a work by shredding it in public. It says so much about the arbitrary way that people value things. There can have been no greater shock than having just bought a new work and watching it apparently disappear before you. Being so rich you can own and take away something that was originally given to the public by being put out as graffiti and yet not being able to own it because the artist (maybe? - he seems to have been at least tipped off) manages to control and change the presentation of his own work.

IMHO being able to arrange something like this shows that Banksy actually is worth the money.

Re:Art experts say it is worth 2x shredded

[AmiMoJo]

Meh, nerds will pay a fortune for used, damaged stuff that is somehow famous. Props from movies and TV shows, stuff that's been in space, parts of famous machines, letters written by notable people, classic cars etc.

Re: Art experts say it is worth 2x shredded

[Anonymous Coward]

If it actually happened and was accurately reported on, then how is it 'fake news', you mongoloid?
Either quit being such a gigantic faggot, kid, or go back to 4chan/b and stay there. You're unfunny.

Re: Art experts say it is worth 2x shredded

[Anonymous Coward]

"fake news", whatever it originally meant, now means "I the person hearing this am to cretinous to process this new information; if it was true I would have to change my whole world outlook and I am fully incapable of even doing that partially". Under that definition for some of the basement dwellers here, this almost certainly counts as fake news.

Re: Art experts say it is worth 2x shredded

[onepoint]

I think that the shredding added value because now the art ( which is well accepted and liked ) has added a value of a statement or act.

like a famous gun that killed someone, it's value increase due to the action it was involved in.

personally, I think it was brilliant. and just the opportunity to watch it happen will give me joy on how wonderful creativity can be.

Same newsfeeds

[Anonymous Coward]

How come news sites all cover the same jackass stories. Don't they realise we see the very same content on every site we go to? Why don't I just go direct to AP?

Re:So to get rich

[religionofpeas]

No you need to be original. You can't just copy someone else's disdain.

Re:He didn't have much moral credibility before th

[serviscope_minor]

Shitty stunt? I say performance art of the highest order.

Bravo!

Isn't the "art" market

[rsilvergun]

just an excuse for rich folks with too much money to spend a day out? Crap like this is what makes me wish for the glory days of a 90% marginal tax rate. If you're gonna shred your money anyway might as well spend it on roads and schools.

Re:Isn't the "art" market

[GameboyRMH]

Not just that, it's an opportunity to pick up some excellent money laundering instruments.

At this point I wish for the glory days of the 90%+ marginal tax rate about a dozen times per day.

Re:I don't know about 2x but definitely worth more

[thegarbz]

So any claim that is is "destroyed" is factually false. At worst it is "damaged".

If this was actually the work of Bansky himself the artwork is now not so much "destroy" or "damaged" as it is "completed".