Laughing all the way to the Banksy
Who said graffiti isn’t art? A painting by infamous English art-prankster and graffiti artist Banksy has sold at Sotheby’s in London for close to $A255,000. The picture, acrylic and spray-paint on canvas, depicts a group of old women playing lawn bowls and is titled Bombing Middle England.
This is the highest price recorded for Banksy’s work to date. The previous record holder is a picture of two deep-sea divers hugging (used as the cover art for Blur’s last album) that sold for around $A156,000 in late 2006.
Banksy notoriety is also about his imaginative and iconoclastic pranks: he has spray painted political and anti-war messages and images on the walls of public buildings. But he achieved worldwide notice through stunts such as surreptitiously sneaking his own work into major galleries and museums.
Banksy has managed to display tongue-in-cheek works - sometimes for weeks in major, security-conscious institutions such as the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the British Museum. He painted the words “I Want Out” in the elephant enclosure at Bristol Zoo, wrote “We’re tired of fish” in the penguin enclosure at London Zoo and painted a group of live animals. When Paris Hilton released her debut album Banksy replaced 500 copies with ones which included song titles such as “Why Am I Famous?” and “What Have I Done?”
On a larger scale, he painted nine images of the Israeli West Bank barrier including an image of a ladder going over it and children digging a hole through it; and famously left a life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee at Disneyland.
More Banksy art goes up for auction at Sotheby’s later in the week.
