LONDON (NYTIMES)- Banksy, the world's favourite artist-provocateur, is set to enjoy another moment of auction activism.
The Bristol-born street artist created a global media sensation last October when one of his Girl With Balloon paintings shredded itself moments after selling for £1 million (S$1.7 million) at Sotheby's.
Almost exactly a year later, on Oct 3, another notable Banksy painting will be offered in the same London salesroom. With a valuation of £1.5 million to £2 million, it is expected to reach a new auction high for that elusive, anonymous artist.
The painting, Devolved Parliament, from 2009, is a timely satire on Britain's political establishment, showing an animated debate in the House of Commons, the Lower House of Parliament, conducted entirely by chimpanzees.
Wittily painted with the dreary realism of the paintings that hang in the British Houses of Parliament and more than 4m wide, the painting was shown at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, in the artist's home town, to coincide with Britain's scheduled departure from the European Union on March 29 this year, a date that has been postponed until Oct 31. Devolved Parliament will be displayed in London just four weeks before the revised Brexit deadline.
Demand for Banksy's paintings and prints has surged since last October when Alex Branczik, Sotheby's head of contemporary art in Europe, announced "We've been Banksy-ed" at a post-sale news conference. The remote-controlled shredding mechanism jammed halfway down the canvas, leaving it dangling beneath its elaborate gold frame: Banksy aficionados quickly claimed this Girl With Balloon had added value as a piece of performance art. Soon after, Sotheby's announced that the buyer, described as a "female European collector", was happy to keep her booby-trapped purchase.
The painting, now retitled Love Is in the Bin, has since March been displayed on long-term loan at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, Germany. "Presented in the museum context, it has to stand up to key works from the history of art - from Rembrandt to Duchamp and from Holbein to Picasso," says the Staatsgalerie's website.
The artistic prank of the century, designed to satirise the excesses of the auction world, has become a highly valued museum piece.
This time around, it seems that Banksy is not behind the sale. Sotheby's catalogue entry for Devolved Parliament says the work was "acquired from the artist by the present owner in 2011".
Banksy's publicist, Joanna Brooks, said in an e-mail, "The painting in question is being sold by the owner who is in no way associated with the artist Banksy."
Regardless of who owns Devolved Parliament, the artist's view that Britain is ruled by political primates will be spread far and wide by the publicity surrounding the sale and the likely social media reaction. And there could also be quite a lot of money to be made. The market for Banksy's art is still on a high after the 2018 shredding incident.
