Banksy Posts Video Showing How He Made Self-Destructing £1.1 Million Painting

Oct 10, 2018 by apost team

Banksy is a guy who will forever be known as a prankster. Why is that? Well, a piece of his artwork went up for sale, a very famous piece, to be exact. When he sells it for more than £1 million, you would think that would be the end of it. Instead, he destroyed it.

Read on to learn more about this crazy stunt and how it came about.

The piece of art up for sale was a print known as “Girl With Balloon.” The famous print shows a girl with a red balloon and was at Sotheby’s auction house, located in London, up for sale. When it sold for an amazing £1.1 million, everyone thought that was the end of it. But it wasn’t. It began to shred itself through the bottom of the frame it was in as soon as the auctioneer finalized the sale with his gavel. 

Banksy explained that he had planned this whole event in a now-deleted post on Instagram.

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A quick video shows the artist building a shredder into his painting in case the piece was ever auctioned off. The video also shows the auction itself and the moment the artwork starts to go through the shredder. However, whoever bought the amazing piece should not be too sad about it. This painting is now worth more than what they paid for it due to the infamy of what happened. The “Girl With Balloon” print could now be worth up to or over £2 million. 

The co-founder of MyArtBroker, Joey Syer, spoke about the publicity stunt. He said that the media attention has now propelled the value of the piece higher than what the original purchase was. He says the buyer will be able to see a great return on their original investment. He goes on to say that the shredded piece is now a big part of art history.

While the buyer may have felt an initial devastation at buying a piece only to see it shredded right before his eyes, it has definitely worked out for the best in the end. He not only purchased a Banksy piece, he also received one that Banksy himself pranked. 

According to Alex Branczik, who is the head of the contemporary art department of the gallery, they had no idea that the stunt was going to happen. He says that the shredding is now a major part of the artwork. We definitely wonder what Banksy has in store for us in the future. This prank will certainly be difficult to beat.

What did you think of this publicity stunt? Let us know in the comment section below and pass this on!