Last Friday night, at Sotheby's contemporary art auction, Banksy, the famous rebel street artist, made History.
Sotheby's had already scored with a remarkable sale, a Jenny Saville painting, Propped, going for over £9.5 million ($12.4 million). This was a record for a living female artist and a victory for all female artists whose work, compared to their male colleagues, is regularly undervalued by the market. Propped is a self-portrait by the artist and it is often seen as a message to empower women because of the quotation from a feminist French critic scribbled across the canvas (written in reverse, hence only legible when viewed in a mirror):
In the photo: Propped, by Jenny Saville. Source: Sotheby
At the close of the session, Banksy's iconic Girl with Balloon, which had been estimated at £300,000, soared to an unprecedented €1.04 million ($1.4 million).
In the photo: Girl with Balloon by Banksy , in its heavy gilded frame shown at Sotheby's Source: Sotheby
The hammer went down and people got up to leave. An alarm unexpectedly sounded and Banksy's painting, still attached to the wall, started to self-destruct. A shredder, hidden in its heavy gilded frame, whirred and gobbled up the painting, shredding the little girl into long vertical strips and sparing only the heart-shaped balloon:Banksy immediately commented on Instagram(he's not on Facebook or Twitter), much to his fans' delight, "Going, going, gone..."
But there's more to that incredible story. Read the rest on Impakter, click here.
Featured Image Source: Sotheby.
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