Astonishing Banksy: one of his works sells at auction for 1 million euros and then self-destructs

It never ceases to amaze Banksy (Bristol, 1974), who goes so far as to make a gesture unprecedented in the history of art, stunning the whole world. In the course of an auction at Sotheby ’s in London, a canvas with his celebrated Girl with balloon (“Little girl with balloon”), which had been auctioned for more than one million euros (to be precise, 1,042,000 pounds, the equivalent of 1 million 180 thousand euros), in fact self-destructed just after the auctioneer had announced the work’s award. The canvas began to descend through some sort of shredder, ending up in tatters.

Great was the surprise of onlookers, as can be seen from the numerous videos circulated on the web. It is not known who triggered the mechanism that brought the work toself-destruction: there are also those who speculate that hidden in the audience was Banksy himself. As is well known, his identity is still unknown: some have speculated that behind the now very famous pseudonym is the musician Robert Del Naja, but of course there is no confirmation. He himself, on his Instagram account, explained that he had installed, in the frame of the painting, a device capable of destroying it if it ended up at auction: however, it is not known how it worked.

Basically, the painting was stripped down more than halfway (before they pulled it off the wall in the room). After all, as Banksy himself wrote quoting Picasso, “the need to destroy is also a creative necessity.” And now it is a foregone conclusion to imagine that the “shredding” of the work has considerably increased its value, despite the fact that, theoretically, the buyer might not honor the purchase, as is the practice if a work suffers damage while it is still in the auction house’s possession. The fact remains, however, that something like this has never been seen before: “we have been . banksyzed,” said Alex Branczik, senior director of contemporary art at Sotheby’s. “We’ve never experienced a situation like this before, a situation where a painting has been destroyed after almost making the artist’s record. Now we’re trying to figure out what that means in the context of an auction.”

Astonishing Banksy: one of his works sells at auction for 1 million euros and then self-destructs

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