Posted on 09/11/2017 9:53:51 AM PDT by Olog-hai
A mural in Calais by the British street artist Banksy, whose works can sell for hundreds of thousands of euros, has been painted over by the owner of the building because he said the house was starting to look shabby and needed an upgrade.
The stencil was a version of the painting The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault, showing a group of desperate survivors on a raft after a wreck. It was given a modern, refugee-themed twist — a nod to the notorious “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais that housed thousands of refugees hoping to get to Britain — with the survivors trying to get the attention of a ferry on the horizon.
It was one of three that the elusive British artist had produced in the port town in 2015 on the theme of migrants.
But the owner of the building on which The Raft of the Medusa was stenciled decided that it was more important to have his property upgraded than to preserve the work of art. …
(Excerpt) Read more at thelocal.fr ...
IOW, private property owner uses his property the way he wants.
moral: don’t create your art on someone else’s property, unless you don’t care to have any control over its fate.
The locals in Calais are mostly sick of the camps and the crap that comes with them. Banksy is passé now besides, and was crap when it was hot anyway. Good on the property owner for painting it over, he was under no obligation to maintain the dated splatterings of trendoid trash.
I wouldn’t want that mural on my building no matter what someone said it was worth.
Ways to REALLY freshen the wall: repaint the Mural as Deadpool and ponies from MLP. The raft as a giant Chimichanga.
He was foolish not to cut it out and sell it. The removal operation and repairs would offer the highest profit margin he’d ever come across.
Needs to be done with all graffiti. And taggers should be shot.
Third world literature for illiterates.
How about Jan Sobieski freeing Vienna?
Or Charles the Hammer defending France.
Maybe he is averse to pro-“migrant” propaganda himself and money is not an object in that respect.
The anti-statue people are going to throw a monkeypoo fit that this was not preserved.
Was the Anarchy A added after the stenciling?
Or take a photo of his wall and sell prints for $1000 each.
Agreed. The guy is a moron. This is like sending a prize dairy bull to the slaughterhouse. But if it is your bull, I guess you have the right to be a moron.
I had no idea how much these Banksy murals can be worth. The property owner may have painted over half a million dollars in market value:
http://www.widewalls.ch/10-most-expensive-banksy-artworks-at-auctions/
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