Art / News
Banksy artwork sells for record price
“In rehearsals it worked every time,” said a now-deleted video posted on Banksy’s official website after his Girl With Balloon stencil mostly shredded itself after being sold for £1m at an auction in 2018.
Its only part-shredding meant that it could once again be sold at auction in its original frame and this time sell for a record price.
The new piece, entitled Love is in the Bin, went under the hammer at Sotheby’s in London on Thursday evening, selling for £16m. Including a buyer’s premium, the anonymous purchaser paid £18.6m in total.
is needed now More than ever
Banksy’s ‘Love is in the Bin’ finally went under the hammer for £18.6m after a ten-minute chase by nine bidders – photo: Sotheby’s
Auctioneer Oliver Barker joked that he was relieved that the artwork was “still there” after the auction closed.
It is a new world record price for the Bristol-born artist, who has had a busy pandemic, among other things creating a new ‘working from home’ artwork, making another piece for the NHS, and finding time to create a new mural on Vale Street in Totterdown and go on a ‘spraycation’ on the east coast of England.
Sotheby’s contemporary art chairman Alex Branczik said the 2018 stunt “did not so much destroy an artwork by shredding it, but instead created one”.
“Today, this piece is considered heir to a venerated legacy of anti-establishment art,” he added, labelling it as “the ultimate Banksy artwork and a true icon of recent art history”.
Main photo: Sotheby’s
Read more: Banksy’s ‘Aachoo!’ removed by crane from wall of Totterdown house
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