The most suspicious element is the placement of the painting and timing of the sale. The painting-just a piece of canvas on a wooden backing-would have also been much wider and heavier than normal, raising suspicion, especially during any condition report, or routine examination of a high-dollar artwork. “And Sotheby’s let a man with a bag into the building. “If it had been offered earlier in the sale, it would have caused disruption and sellers would have complained about that,” says Morgan Long, head of the art investment company the Fine Art Group who witnessed the shredding from the front row. Doubters point out that Sotheby’s does not allow people to carry bags into their auctions. He was later said to have been removed by security. First, a man operating an electronic device inside a bag was spotted in the auction house, presumably someone turning on the remote control shredder, as seen in a post from the chairman of Sotheby’s Switzerland, Caroline Lang’s private Instagram account, Reyburn reports. However, Reyburn reports that there is some evidence the auction house was in on the gag, despite their denials. “I’ll be quite honest, we have not experienced this situation in the past, where a painting is spontaneously shredded upon achieving a record for the artist.” “We’ve been Banksy-ed,” Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s head of European Contemporary art said in a press conference after the incident. The staff of Sotheby’s denies any prior knowledge of the shredding. The painting’s sale coincides with Frieze Week, one of London’s most significant art fairs.
He also posted an Instagram quoting Picasso, “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.” In a video posted after the incident, Banksy shows how he built a custom shredding device into the large gilt frame in case the work was ever sold at auction. The piece was a classic Banksy motif known as “Girl with Balloon,” created using spray paint on canvas back in 2006. But as soon as the auctioneer dropped the gavel, something unexpected happened: a beeping alarm went off and the frame began eating the painting, spitting half of it out the bottom in what may be the first instance of a self-destructing painting, reports Scott Reyburn at The New York Times. On Friday night, a painting by the anonymous street artist known as Banksy sold at Sotheby’s auction house in London for $1.4 million.
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