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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.
Which tells you everything you need to know about how specious and capricious the valuation model is for the art market.
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?
What I find amazing is that there doesn't seem to be a video showing actual shredding. Just the aftermath.
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.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
As an erstwhile collector of art, a nerd, and a wannabe evil genius, I am simultaneously appalled, amused, and envious. Bravo, sir. Well played.
The buyer is probably ecstatic because they can sell it for much more now that people are claiming it's worth even more now.
No you need to be original. You can't just copy someone else's disdain.
Shitty stunt? I say performance art of the highest order.
Bravo!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Agree. This painting is now famous. It's going to be worth way more than $1.3M in ten years. Buyer has to be psyched.
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.
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That's after it happened
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
In the US, from the perspective of common law, the buyer would technically have no recourse in a purely civil claim unless he could establish that he suffered harm that can be quantified in dollars... and that he actually DID suffer a net loss. So, he might still have an actionable claim if he suffered indirect harm whose cash value exceeded the instant profit from the art doubling in value... but it would be an uphill battle to quantify the cash value of an emotion like "disappointment".
There's also & independently the possibility of criminal prosecution ("conversion", for example, might be a tort... but in most jurisdictions, it can ALSO be a criminal offense under certain conditions). The catch with the criminal angle is that the buyer purchased "experimental art" from someone KNOWN for doing things like this, so Banksy could semi-legitimately argue that the unanticipated public shredding was itself integral the art & what was purchased.
TL/DR: legally, it's the kind of case only the lawyers would collectively win. If the buyer is unhappy, their best recourse would honestly be to just flip the painting to someone else & walk away. At most, a vengeful buyer might spend a fortune, waste time testifying in court, give Banksy a metaphorical black eye... and be blacklisted as a potential art buyer going forward. "Experimental art" is, by definition, kind of fucked up by "normal person standards", and that applies to BOTH artists AND patrons.
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.
Here is the actual shredding from Banksy himself: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo...
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
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.....
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There has always been a prank element in modern art. Remember those Warhol pieces that were nothing but giant stenciled prices? What are those going for today, if indeed they are still being traded?
There has also been art that was intended to be ephemeral, like Christo’s shrouded landforms. Those were not for purchase, though. Did the buyer of this piece know it was about to self-destruct.
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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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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...
The paper is shredded just as the artist intended
That's the bit that impressed me. Damn thing actually worked. He should go into business selling shredders.