Sotheby’s Get Banksy’ed

Posted on by JMVL

by: JMVL

Some people say that graffiti is art and others say its straight up vandalism. Since I grew up on hip hop and used to breakdance when I was little, I personally find graffiti very interesting. I have always wondered how people get to such extreme heights on buildings and on the sides of large bridges to do their graffiti. Even though I can agree that many just walk around and spray some random stuff on walls, there are also many who define themselves as graffiti artists and actually make amazing pieces with spray cans. Banksy is one of these, he is an anonymous England-based street artist, political activist and some may even call him a vandal.

I find it very interesting how Banksy travels across the world and puts up mostly political mixed with dark humor stencils, and how people manage to sell them for millions. Since he puts his pieces on walls, bridges and self made physical props, there have been cases of people or cities removing the whole surface where he has made the piece, and then either sell it at an auction or just displayed at museums. I don’t think that this was what Banksy was trying to do, I believe that he just wanted to go around the world and put up his politically loaded pieces in public, and now they have become so much more then that.

In October of 2018 there was an auction at Sotheby’s, where they were putting up one of Banksy’s pieces called “Girl With Balloon”. The piece was sold to an anonymous buyer for around 1 million British pounds, which is the same as approx. 11 million Norwegian kroner. This alone shows how much one of Banksy’s pieces are worth. The weird thing about this auction is that, when the piece was finally sold, it started to shred itself into pieces. People were shocked as they saw the 11 million kroner art piece destroy itself on the wall.

This stunt was later revealed to be planned by Banksy for years. When he made the piece he built a shredder inside of the frame, so when it was sold it would destroy itself. Now, Banksy was trying to make a statement about his art, and this was the reason behind the stunt. Many people would think that if the art gets shredded into pieces, it would surely lose its value. But, for some reason art experts later appraised the shredded and destroyed art piece to a higher value then before.

This really shows how art and design is so free and does not have so specific rules and regulations of what art actually is. The Girl With Balloon was already worth 11 million kroner before it was destroyed, but since it was Banksy himself who planned the destruction of the art, its value rose to the sky and is now worth a lot more then what it originally was worth.

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