Is Banksy Shredding or Creating Art?
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Background
Love is in the bin was initially named The Balloon Girl/ Girl with Balloon.
The original painting featured a girl reaching for a red heart-shaped balloon, which was then placed into the wood frame as the painting was auctioned off at Sotheby's auction house in London.
In 2018, during a live auction, just as the gavel went down after the winning bid of £860,000 was placed, the artwork started to shred itself from a built-in shredder inside the frame. Banksy had planned to activate it whenever it was sold at an auction. In a video he posted on his YouTube channel banksyfilm, it was shown that there was a reddish button pressed after the bid was placed.
The twist is that Banksy claimed it had malfunctioned. It was shredded halfway through, leaving the other half untouched. The whole painting was immediately taken down to the backstage.
Shredding the Girl and Balloon - The Director’s half cut
The director’s cut, a double entendre. Behind the scenes of the piece's execution, and the shredding itself.
planned?
It may have seemed as if Banksy and the Sotheby’s auction house was in tangent behind this “tomfoolery”.
However, Banksy later revealed they knew nothing about it beforehand, clearing their name on his Instagram. By destroying his work the moment it was sold at a record price, he criticized the art market and how artworks are treated as pure commodities, accusing the world capitalism auction promotes. He was pulling a fast one on the Sotheby’s auction house, making a statement about the commercialization of art by performing a stunt in a room full of paparazzi.
After this bizarre stunt, Sotheby's renamed the new, partially shredded work to "Love is in the Bin." This became a highly publicized and talked-about topic in the art world. But at the end of the day, the piece was sold at £18,582,000, topping the highest sales in the street art industry. Ironic
After the original Balloon Girl was shredded, it somehow represents that love could still exist even if it is physically torn down. But let’s be real here, representation is just what people add to paintings.
This Mickey Mouse drama shows the nature of art and value deconstructed and yet, constructed in front of our very eyes. It points towards the unpredictability and absurdity of the art world and the market.
Sotheby’s Perspective on the shredding
Common Fallacy
People do not understand, how Banksy’s art gets into an auction place, do they have legs or something?
The fact is, some of the works aren’t published in the market by Banksy.
For instance, the Balloon Girl didn’t “get in” the auction, but it was a collector who put it up for auction. Around a decade ago, Banksy was selling his art directly through certified dealers, at exhibitions, or through his former printers, Pictures on Walls. It’s currently impossible to buy an art piece from Banksy directly, and is only available on the secondary market.
Disclaimer: The following content is quoted and rephrased from an online platform, it does not represent our website’s opinion
On Reddit, this user with the username “ViiITAMINS” initially disliked Banksy, believing his work was “edgy art”. This user also criticized his “hypocrisy”, “They prize his artwork which just makes me feel gross, idk how else to describe it”.
However, this user later criticized the public’s treatment of Banksy’s art, “The fact that his illegal artwork is a selling point, [whereas] most other graffiti artists get berated and their art destroyed daily no matter how beautiful it is (and trust me some graffiti art is the best art I've ever seen) but Banksy somehow rises above it. If it’s Banksy's art then it is protected and prized.”
Later, she apologized for her poor choice of words, putting how people view his art at fault, instead of the artist.
Quoted “separated Banksy from Banksy's art consumption”. Understanding the true meaning of art is something so beautiful and full of meaning, yet it has been turned into a hobby for the rich. Or something to stare at without comprehending the message it is trying to convey.
It’s nice seeing how this changemyview community in Reddit promotes rational conversations rather than kids disrespecting others with verbal insults.
And this is it, the process of Banksy shredding his artwork but turning it into another.
But people often doubt that this fame of his is for wealth, is that so?
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