Banksy’s Chimp Parliament Painting Sells for a Startling $12 Million, Prompting Both Cheers and Jeers

There is absolutely no doubt about what stole the thunder this
evening at Sotheby’s Frieze week contemporary art auction—and it
was a bunch of monkeys.

Devolved Parliament, the massive painting by Banksy of
chimpanzees sitting, chewing, scratching, and just generally being
chimpanzees in Britain’s House of Commons sold for a record £9.9
million pounds ($12.1 million). That total was nearly five
times the high estimate of £2 million ($2.47 million). It was also
by far a record for a work by the street artist at auction, which
was previously the $1.87 million paid for Keep It
Spotless at Sotheby’s New York way back in 2008.

Laughter, seemingly representing both delight and disbelief,
spread throughout the room during the nearly 13-minute bidding
battle. Sotheby’s head of sale.

Among the early bidders were Warhol/Basquiat/Hirst
trader-collector Jose Mugrabi and Turkish banker Halit
Cingillioglu, who first took the price beyond the low £1.5 million
estimate. But they were soon submerged beneath a torrent of
telephone bids—and one persistent bidder at the back of the
room—until the Banksy fell to the phone manned by Emma Baker,
Sotheby’s head of sale.

The painting was the top lot of the sale, coming equal with
Pyro by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which performed less
remarkably, selling within estimate. “It’s a big moment,” said
Sotheby’s Alex Branczik after the sale, “when Banksy shares top
price with Basquiat.”

He might have added that it is a big moment when a Banksy
painting of chimpanzees sold for more than a Francis Bacon of
chimpanzees. Bacon’s 1951 painting, Figure with
Monkey, sold just above its estimate for £2.8 million ($3.4
million) this evening to British art advisor Wentworth
Beaumont.

It had been suggested the Banksy himself was the seller of the
painting because the work had changed—it
was darker in tone, with a few bananas added—since it was last
exhibited. But Sotheby’s claimed that Banksy had asked the owner if
he could make the changes. (This side plot amounted to a slightly
less intriguing mystery than his trick
artwork Girl with Balloon, which self-destructed
in the auction room last year after being sold, gaining worldwide
press attention.)

The artist himself addressed the rumors on Instagram after the
sale, posting an image featuring a quote form the late art critic
Robert Hughes decrying high auction prices, and offering the
laconic caption: “Record price for a Banksy painting set at auction
tonight. Shame I didn’t still own it.”

So the seller remains a mystery.

“We gave it a shot but didn’t get it,” said Jonathan Cheung of
the Maddox Gallery of Devolved Parliament. “It’s a
super piece… No surprises at £10 million in my opinion—especially
given the prices being achieved at the print level!”

Not all of the art world was so complimentary, though.

“I call BS to compare (favorably) his art to the art of Jean
Michel Basquiat as ‘street artists,’” art advisor Josh Baer wrote
in his auction newsletter, the Baerfaxt, after the sale. “Look at a
JMB painting vs this work, which is pretty much a poster. If your
art advisor is 14 years old, and has been pushing you to also go
long Kaws, then the rest of us art advisors over 30 or whatever
should just quit.”

The post Banksy’s Chimp Parliament Painting Sells for a
Startling $12 Million, Prompting Both Cheers and Jeers appeared
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