What do you think of this fact?
Usually, a work of art loses value when it gets destroyed. Banksy is different. His best-known picture only became truly valuable through its own destruction.
The shredder in the frame
In October 2018, a painting by the anonymous street artist Banksy, “Girl with Balloon”, went up for auction in London. The winning bid was about £1.04 million. But the moment the hammer came down, something happened that nobody expected.
The painting slid down out of its frame, in strips. A shredder was hidden in the frame. It cut the picture about halfway, then jammed. The audience in the room was stunned.
From broken to art
The sale went through anyway. Banksy gave the half-shredded painting a new name: “Love is in the Bin”.
Three years later, in October 2021, it went under the hammer again. According to the Shropshire Star, it fetched £18,582,000 this time. According to NBC Los Angeles, that’s about 25.4 million US dollars.
That made the painting worth about 18 times as much as at the first sale. The shredder hadn’t destroyed it, it had turned it into one of the most famous artworks of our time.
Bonus fact: To this day, the public doesn’t know for sure who Banksy really is. The artist keeps their identity secret and never appears openly.
Many see the stunt as a comment on the art market, where paintings are often bought mainly as expensive investments. And it was that very market that rewarded the stunt with a record price.
So if you accidentally tear a picture at home, don’t celebrate too soon. Sadly, the Banksy trick doesn’t work for most paintings.