Just Another Banksy: Can we study artworks using the term surplus value or the increase in the value of a good for extrinsic causes. From this analysis does it follow a double fiction; an economic one - related to the monetary value of this artist's work within the art market - and an emotional one- based on the interpersonal relationships established by the means of the exchanges of the artwork. Are the latter social relations and are they part of the Mehrwert or “payoff”. Public artwork has the usual problems of speech rights.
Does artwork have a “media effect” — this paper offers street art, as an example of a potential Situationist praxis. Specifically this paper looks towards the works of Banksy, and how they may rhetorically function as an effective means of cultural critique that can potentially lead to revolutionizing consciousness, and transforming human nature within a Situationist framework.
This thesis examines the concept of the spectacle as developed by the Situationists as its object of critique and the concepts of culture, unitary urbanism, psychogeography, détournement and dérive as the framework in which the spectacle can be successfully critiqued in order to foster a more critical consciousness. In addition to this framework my claim is that the aforementioned elements are accomplished by the work of Banksy and his ability to alter the material conditions of our reality through his rhetorical construction of material enactments by creating appropriate and kairotic works which provide life to the Situationist's projects and affords the potentiality of revolutionizing consciousness.
scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/...
www.nytimes.com/…
www.itv.com/…
A huge mural painted by the street artist Banksy has been cut out of the wall of a building under cover of darkness.
Builders removed the giant painting of a seagull, cutting it from the end wall of a house in Lowestoft in Suffolk and lifting it away with a crane.
Its removal comes just weeks after another part of the work was removed, and has sparked disappointment at the potential loss of another piece of public art in the seaside town.
The complete piece, left by the elusive artist in the summer of 2021 as part of his Great British Spraycation, originally consisted of a giant painting of a seagull swooping to make a grab for "chips" made of insulation board arranged in a nearby skip.
It is not yet known where the work is being moved to.
"They're not going to leave it on the end of a house, to get vandalised or damaged when it's worth serious money - a small fortune I'm told.
"I've been given figures from £1m to £3m."
www.itv.com/...
artandlaborpodcast.com/...
The $60 pop-up sale in New York City (2013)
Despite the often-seriousness of his messaging, Banksy has a healthy sense of humor. (The devoutly anonymous artist’s webpage, for instance, includes a photo of someone—purportedly Banksy—being sketched by an outdoor portrait artist, while wearing a ski mask.)
A 2013 pop-up in New York City found Banksy offering $60 original stencil paintings near Central Park. As Gizmodo noted at the time, it wasn’t surprising that most people walked right on by, since Manhattan’s sidewalks are “littered with people selling Banksy ripoffs.” It’s helpful to consider this gonzo sale as a self-contained performance artwork in its own right, and a commentary on value, celebrity, and site-specific context. Banksy reprised the concept, in a very different form, in Venice in 2019. There, he (or someone acting on his behalf) set up a street stall to peddle a series of oil paintings depicting the sort of cruise ship that is helping to slowly sink the city.
www.artsy.net/...
The artwork, which started as a spray-painted canvas from 2006 called “Girl With Balloon,” had been the last lot of Sotheby’s equivalent “Frieze Week” sale in October 2018. Immediately after being bought in a telephone bid, for $1.4 million, an alarm went off in the salesroom. Sotheby’s staffers and the audience at the auction gasped as the painting slid through its elaborate gold frame and shredded, then jammed halfway through. It was carried out via a remote-controlled mechanism hidden in the frame. Sotheby’s declared afterward that it had been “Banksy-ed.”
Devised by Banksy to subvert the excesses of the art trade, according to his Instagram posts, the stunt created what experts correctly predicted would become a highly valuable work of performance art.
“Love Is in the Bin,” with its shredded lower half dangling under the frame, was displayed behind a protective glass screen at Sotheby’s. It had been offered for sale by an unidentified European collector. It was exhibited for 11 months next to revered old masters at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Germany in 2019-20. During that period, the Staatsgalerie said, it attracted 180,000 visitors, about double its usual attendance.
Leading up to the sale, the artwork, which the auctioneer Oliver Barker, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, termed “this great iconic Banksy,” had been exhibited old master-style in a sepulchrally lit gallery of its own, not unlike the darkened chamber in which Christie’s had exhibited the $450.3 million “Salvator Mundi” in New York in 2017.
www.nytimes.com/...
Love is in the Bin (2019)
Banksy has been recycling the motif of a Girl with Balloon regularly since the early 2000s. The composition is dead simple—a young child gesturing toward a heart-shaped balloon floating away from her. It’s not clear whether the girl has released the balloon on purpose, or has let go of the string by accident. The most famous public example was executed on London’s Waterloo Bridge in 2002. Over the ensuing years, it has become a beloved image, the British equivalent of American artist Robert Indiana’s omnipresent LOVE sculpture. Polls have shown that it’s actually the nation’s favorite artwork, period.
Compared to most of Banksy’s oeuvre, it’s non-confrontational and almost saccharine. That might be why, when a 2006 version of Girl with Balloon came up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2018, Banksy decided to subvert the work with a live stunt that shocked audiences (and hijacked the art-world news cycle for the week). The painting, installed in a suspiciously bulky and ornate frame, hammered at $1.3 million with fees—at which point it infamously “self-destructed,” dropping into a shredding device that sliced up a good half of the canvas.
Critics had plenty of questions. Was Sotheby’s in on the prank? Was Banksy’s assertion that the shredder “malfunctioned” disingenuous? Why is the destroyed piece—now retitled by the artist as Love is in the Bin—more valuable than the original? How long did it take for McDonald’s to use the whole thing in an advertisement? While it’s true that serious art-world people were mostly bemused by the affair, Love is in the Bin simply proved what an unstoppable cultural force Banksy is.
www.artsy.net/…
“Love Is in the Bin,” originally titled “Girl With Balloon,” was resold. It had been partially shredded after it was bought at a Sotheby’s auction in 2018.
“I expected it would make £20 million,” said Acoris Andipa, a London-based dealer who specializes in Banksy’s paintings and prints. “It’s such an infamous work. Together with Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi,’ it’s been the world’s most talked-about artwork of the last two or three years.”
www.nytimes.com/...
Banksy himself is not involved in the project. We own a number of Banksy pieces that we are fractionalising and selling shares in. Any owner of one of the fractions will own a legal share in a physical banksy painting.