So now we know: a work of art can be worth far more once you destroy it. Well that’s true if you’re Banksy. Just a few weeks ago I mused on how much his ‘transformed picture’ Love is in the bin – previously Girl with Balloon – might make when it appeared at Sotheby’s on October 14. It had previously sold for £1m in 2018, and the moment the hammer fell, the canvas dropped through a shredder hidden in the bottom of the frame.
Shocking it may have been at the time, but it was a stunt that caught the art market’s attention, fascination and even admiration, turning the picture immediately into Banksy’s most famous / notorious artwork, and so also the most valuable of his paintings.
It remains the greatest irony that the artist who does more than any other to subvert the art market and its processes has proved himself yet again the ultimate master of the industry’s marketing machine.
In this context, while Sotheby’s estimate of £4-6 million might have looked a little punchy, it did not seem beyond the bounds of possibility. So what happened on the night? Forget the estimate; frenzied bidding took the painting to £18.5 million hammer, a record for any piece of Street art, sealing Banksy’s status at the top of the international art pantheon for living artists alongside the likes of David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Beeple and Jeff Koons.
