Banksy Can Insult His Collectors All He Wants—It Won’t Keep Them From Buying, a Recent $1.4 Million Christie’s Auction Proves

Depending on whose side you take, the cheeky title of an auction
of work by the street artist Banksy—”I can’t believe you morons
actually buy this sh*t,” a name taken from one of the artist’s own
works—either worked like a charm or was an utter failure.

Doing precisely what the artist derides them for, buyers at
Christie’s snapped up each of the online sale’s 29 lots, for a
total of $1.4 million (far above presale expectations of $587,000
to $901,000). The top lot of the event was Banksy’s 2004
screenprint Girl with Balloon, featuring a gold
heart-shaped balloon, which sold for £395,250 ($492,500)—a record
for a Banksy print. Another Girl with Balloon, with a red
heart, sold for £62,500 ($77,880).

Both prints are similar to the now infamous work that
automatically shredded during a sale last year at Sotheby’s London,
just after the gavel came down at $1.4 million. Sotheby’s later
revealed that the winning bidder, who was described as a
“female European collector” and a “longstanding client,”
had decided to keep the work in its shredded form after a week
of negotiations.

“When the hammer came down last week and the work was shredded,
I was at first shocked, but gradually I began to realize that I
would end up with my own piece of art history,” the collector said
in a statement. (Banksy, meanwhile, agreed to “re-authenticate” the
piece with a new title, Love Is in the Bin.)

Sotheby’s made the most of its publicity coup, describing the
object as “the first work in history ever created during a live
auction”—a claim to which Banksy could have easily replied: “I
can’t believe you morons actually buy this…” well, you get it.
(That quote, by the way, comes from the title of a 2007 work by
Banksy depicting an auctioneer in a crowded salesroom.)

Meanwhile, the rumor mill has been churning of late about the
possibility that Banksy is actually a member of the trip-hop group
Massive Attack, which is kicking off a three-day concert series at
Radio City Music Hall this week. “If the conspiracy buffs are
right, you’ll want to be on the lookout for witty
graffiti popping up around New York City this weekend,”
the New York
Post said. “Some believe that Banksy, the elusive,
anonymous creator of politically cheeky graffiti and [vocalist
Robert ‘3D’] Del Naja—who sings about having ‘a soul without a
mind’ and ‘a body without a heart’—are the same person.”

The post Banksy Can Insult His Collectors All He Wants—It
Won’t Keep Them From Buying, a Recent $1.4 Million Christie’s
Auction Proves appeared first on artnet News.