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

Amazing part

[religionofpeas]

What I find amazing is that there doesn't seem to be a video showing actual shredding. Just the aftermath.

I can't believe Sothebys' Was Surprised

[mykepredko]

While a very cool hack and worthy of banksy, I have to question as to whether or not Sotheby's was surprised.

For this to have worked, the frame must be quite heavy to allow the shredder mechanism to be hidden within a hollowed out area and not be noticed by being heavier at one end. Along with that, the canvas must have seemed to be mounted in an atypical fashion so that the feed and guides were invisible. Finally, I presume that the shredder was controlled by something like a cell phone - I presume there would be a big honking battery in there because I would have to think would be days/weeks between receiving the art, having it on display and then starting the auction.

As I said, very cool hack, but I can't believe that Sotheby's was surprised by it.

Re:I can't believe Sothebys' Was Surprised

[Zocalo]

I dunno, some frames are pretty heavy, especially the wooden ones, so it wouldn't be too difficult to put the shredder in the bottom and some batteries in the top and sides to balance it all up. Having the frame cover the guides wouldn't be too unusual either; it's quite common for the outer edge of a canvas or print to be behind the frame - usually it's wrapped all the way around and fixed on the rear. There are any number of release mechanisms that don't suck much juice either; you just need to think beyond the couple of days of your typical smartphone with all feature enabled - a modified camera remote could work very well for instance.

That said, I'm pretty sure that Sotheby's was aware to at least expect *something* out of the ordinary, if not exactly what was going to happen. Note also it appears to have stopped shredding with the image partially intact and still in the frame in a manner that still allows for display, probably by design so that the buyer is going to be upset either. Quite the opposite in fact; they now have an extremely famous piece of art that is now an extremely famous piece of performance art as well - instant appreciation in value, for those that are into that kind of thing.

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

[mykepredko]

This is art that the artist, presumably, updated after being sold.

He's publicly updated it especially for the buyer. You don't know if it was specific to this buyer or if there were other options to the shredding depending on the mood of the artist.

I think it's fair to say it's now worth more.

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

[crunchygranola]

Some other factors to consider:

If you look at photos of the post-shredded picture, you see that it is only half shredded (the upper part with the balloon is unshredded) which holds the picture together, and that the image of the girl is still intact, just hanging together in strips. So any claim that is is "destroyed" is factually false. At worst it is "damaged". If the buyer wanted to they could reframe it, with the strips carefully glued down and only close inspection would tell the difference.

Bansky has used this image many times. This is not his only "Girl with Balloon" image, but it is now his most famous one. How can that not add to its value, even if you dismiss the high end art world as pretentious gits? Fame has always been associated directly with value in art.

Looking at the post-shred state it does look like a modern conceptual art installation piece (whether you respect that or not is irrelevant). This piece now has a story: the piece of art is what Banksy intended it to be, a dynamic object that changed its state upon be acquired (but without the acquirer knowing about the state change in advance). If the buyer decides they are upset about the final state of the piece, they might be able to get the purchase contract rescinded on the grounds that what they were buying was not fully disclosed, but that depend on the fine print of what they agreed to when they registered to bid. But I bet if they are upset they can resell it for more than they just paid. Famous, you know.

Last I checked there did not seem to be any statement by the new owner.

Several posters have asserted here that high end art is a hobby for people and organizations with more money than they know what to do with. And this is true pretty much (give or take a few value-laden terms).

Re:Felony

[Desler]

The buyer is probably ecstatic because they can sell it for much more now that people are claiming it's worth even more now.

Re:Art experts say it is worth 2x shredded

[hey!]

Well, that's true of the market for everything. The most precious commodity there is for human survival is air, but there is nonetheless the cliche "Free as air."

Market prices in an ideal economy reflect efficient distribution of resources like paint, canvas and skilled labor, without passing any ethical or aesthetic judgment on the use to which they are put. Take for example, this item. It has no utility value, and it's taste is questionable, but the fact that it can be sold for $90 justifies putting the resources into making it rather than, say, medical prosthetics or water purification equipment for some poor village.

The great virtue of the market economy is that it works, not that it makes any sense. It only makes sense in a circular fashion; if you define what is sensible by what the market economy chooses to do.

Re:at $1.3 Million they have the funds to sue in c

[sjames]

Was it lost? They sold a work of art from Banksey. That is, a work of art as Banksey intended for it to be. They just didn't know Banksey intended for it to be shredded. Nevertheless, it is still what it was represented to be.

According to at least some in the art world, it is worth MORE now than it was, so the buyer can't claim lost value.

The buyer wanted a piece of art depicting a child losing a balloon. The work turned out to be evocative enough that he actually feels at a visceral level like a child that has just lost a balloon.

Great art is that which evokes emotion

[SethJohnson]

I support your assertion and say the shredding is 100% part of the installation.

The original image is that of a child losing a balloon to the wind. Any parent who considers it feels a sinking in their stomach knowing how upsetting this is for the child. Great art is that which can make you experience an emotion. At the moment the shredding began, the buyer was immediately inserted into the body of that little girl losing the balloon. The buyer thought they were going to acquire a prized Banksy art piece and suddenly it was stolen from their hands by the wind, just like that balloon.

That's just one level of how this piece works. Secondarily, it sparks the exact debate filling posts here on Slashdot- is this valuable art to begin with if the value is increased by 'damaging' it? Banksy has been teasing the art world with this critique for over a decade and this piece is perhaps the epitome of that argument.

Finally, Banksy is a financial genius building demand for her work with stunts like this. Banksy has artificially controlled availability of her work to preserve the demand and high prices. Here, it seemed as though one of Banksy's iconic paintings was going to be available for a simple exchange of cash -- but not as easy as it would appear! The work committed suicide to escape the collector! And so the hunt continues.....

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

[serviscope_minor]

Look at it this way. Banksy got (among other things) a bunch of tech nerds yelling at each other about the meaning of art rather than vi versus emacs, Linux vs windows or republicans vs democrats.

What is the point of art if not to provke emotion?

Just look at the audiences faces in his video (he posted it recently). A 12 year setup for 3 seconds of some of the most epic trolling the world has seen.

Sotheby's knew

[NimbleSquirrel]

I find it impossible to believe that Sotheby's didn't know a thing about this. Any real art curator would have noticed something odd with the frame immediately. I also do not believe that the thing sat there for months/weeks standing by to be triggered (especially cellular trigger) and maintained enough charge to shred anything. This would mean the art curator would have to have been complicit in this too. This would be career ending for an art curator, so it is far more likely that Sotheby's knew about this the whole time.

I expect that the buyers will sue Sotheby's pretty quickly after this. Even if the remains are now worth double, the work that was sold has been irreparably damaged/destroyed. It can easily be shown that Sotheby's knew or should have known about this. If the buyers don't sue, either Sotheby's buried a clause in their buyer Terms & Conditions, or the buyer was in on this too.

Either way, this is an elaborate stunt that reveals Banksy as a sellout...