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Banksy Didn’t Shred His Painting. The Art Market Did.
On capitalism, greed, and our desire to possess the unpossessable
A few weeks ago, during the ache and anticipation of the Brett Kavanaugh debacle, the art world endured a disaster of its own. Sotheby’s auctioned off a painting, Girl With Balloon, by street artist Banksy. A split-second after it sold for $1.4 million, its unassuming gold frame shredded it into what some reporters would have us believe are now worthless strips of a formerly precious work of art.
Arts writers were aflutter. What would happen next? Would this void the sale? How would it affect the resale value? “Sotheby’s has not named the client whose $1.4 million purchase was destroyed,” a New York Times article informed us, perfectly illustrating the art world’s inability, or willful refusal, to see past an object to the intention behind it.
They missed the point.
The painting wasn’t destroyed. Irreplaceable pieces of Charles Saatchi’s contemporary art collection, which perished in a 2006 East London warehouse fire — those were destroyed. Girl With Balloon’s destruction, however, was a conceptual artist transforming his own piece of art. He did so as a premeditated response to the actions of an exploitative art market.
