Painting shreds itself immediately after being sold for £1.042 Million at auction

On Friday night, Sotheby's in London held an auction at which the final piece to be sold was the framed Girl With Balloon by Banksy — a 2006 spray paint on canvas that originally appeared on a wall in Great Eastern Street and was voted UK's favourite artwork in 2017.

ALSO READ: Belvedere Vodka and visual artist unveil new limited edition bottle

The piece sold to an undisclosed buyer for £1.042 Million ($1.4 Million), but to the astonishment of the audience, the painting self-destructed few minutes after the gavel went down on the item.

Who is Banksy?

Banksy is a Bristol-born artist whose identity has never been officially revealed. However, his reputation and graffiti and street art on buildings all across the UK drew him to fame.

The reclusive street artist is known for his elaborate art pranks and his unwillingness to see his art being sold. One of his famous pranks was when he installed fake (satirical) exhibits in popular museums, including the MET, in 2005. They went unnoticed for a day or more.

In fact, the 2018 movie Ocean's 8 dedicates an entire plot point to the 2005 prank by the street artist, which involves him switching out a Met painting for one of his own without anyone noticing.

As a street artist, he believes that art should be enjoyed by everyone and usually leaves canvas paintings on the streets of London. However, his paintings are usually taken and set up at "unauthorised exhibitions" or sold at aunctions.

We've just been Banksy-ed

This could go down as one of the most audacious and expensive pranks of all Banksy's pranks, and of all time.

In an interview with the New York Times, Morgan Long, the head of art investment at the London-based advisory firm Fine Art Group, who was sitting in the front row of the room, said: “...We heard an alarm go off, everyone turned round, and the picture had slipped through its frame.”

On Saturday evening, Banksy released a video on Instagram showing how he (a hooded figure) secretly built a shredder into the framed Girl With Balloon paintings that self-destructed after it was sold for £1.042m, more than three times the estimate.

ALSO READ: Dora Akunyili's daughter's artwork sells for N1.2bn

The artist writes in the video, “A few years ago, I secretly built a shredder into a painting... In case it was ever put up for auction.” The video then shows the moment the painting shredded itself at the auction house on Friday, captured on a mobile phone.

Banksy later posted an image on Instagram of the shredded work dangling from the bottom of the frame with the title “Going, going, gone … ” also quoting Picasso: “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”

There are many theories surrounding this prank. First, it is uncertain whether the buyer will still have to pay for the destroyed painting as Sotheby's have refused to name the buyer and appear to be shell-shocked on what next steps to take. Reports say a man was spotted in the salesroom operating an electronic device hidden inside a bag and another being removed from the building by Sotheby’s security staff, pointing to speculation that Sotheby's might not have been entirely taken by surprise.

Being the publicity artist that Banksy is, this ruse could also have been staged to raise the price of the painting. It was neatly shredded and could possibly be recovered by a conservator. We all know that the more publicity an artwork gets, the pricier it becomes.

Joey Syer, co-founder of MyArtBroker, a site that resells Banksy's painting, says: “The auction result will only propel this further and given the media attention this stunt has received, the lucky buyer would see a great return on the £1.02m they paid last night. This is now part of art history in its shredded state and we’d estimate Banksy has added at a minimum 50% to its value, possibly as high as being worth £2m plus.”