Posted on 10/07/2018 2:00:09 PM PDT by Mad Dawgg
LONDON (AP) Art prankster Banksy has struck again.
A work by the elusive street artist self-destructed in front of startled auction-goers on Friday, moments after being sold for 1.04 million pounds ($1.4 million). In an Instagram post Saturday, Banksy claimed the dramatic artistic payoff had been years in the making.
The spray-painted canvas Girl With Balloon went under the hammer at Sothebys in London, fetching more than three times its pre-sale estimate and equaling a record price for the artist.
Then, as an alarm sounded, it ran through a shredder embedded in the frame, leaving half the canvas hanging from the bottom in strips.
A post on Banksys official Instagram account showed the moment and the shocked reaction of those in the room with the words Going, going, gone
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
LOL! Wonderful post!
Who was the seller? If I was they buyer I’d put a stop payment on the check.Let the seller and the “artist” fight it out in court.
It was actually a beautiful piece and to shred it in front of the bidder willing to pay $1.4 million? Sick.
The "artiste" should be sued for destroying the bidder's property. Intentional and negligent emotional distress damages as well not to mention felony vandalism so he can draw stuff in jail for a few years. IMHO. :-(
Let’s give the artist some credit for being clever. “Easy come, easy go...” regarding a lost balloon, or your money. Very clever. As for shredding the girl and not the balloon, that is a much darker message by the artist.
Well, there is a minor interest in the fact that the girl has let the balloon sadly go, while the buyer has also lost his piece.
Otherwise, another superficial marketing prank. Clever, but empty. I’m not a fan of art made—and destroyed—for shocking attention.
The final form of the piece was the shredded version. I would bet that the buyer has already been offered at least twice the sales value of the piece. This will probably be loaned to a museum for display.
Very clever. A good place for parking spare cash.
I thought maybe the battery died.
I wonder if he rigged it to trigger with the sounds of a finished auction, or if that would be too much probably easier if he set it off remotely, but more problematic because he’d be destroying someone else’s art at that point, whereas if they bought a painting that was already rigged to destruct, that’s what they bought, even if they didn’t know it.
See #47. Seems that the shredded art was the final version, intended by the artist. Don't know the ramifications if the buyer would be angry, but if you're paying $1.4 million for this crap then you have money to burn and would be pleased that the value instantly jumped during the sale. A lot of speculating whether it was automatically set to shred, or whether someone remote triggered it. Either way, it appears it was set to shred only part way, otherwise it would all be useless scraps on the floor. I would not park my money in that kind of art, just wish I had that kind of money sitting around to frivolously spend.
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