A painting that was cut in half, hanging under the frame like a shredded piece of paper. How much money would you pay to buy this "refractory product"?
Someone is willing to pay 164 million to buy it.
On October 14th local time in London, Banks, the "self-destruction" painting "Love is in the Bin" by the world's most famous street artist Banks was auctioned again at Sotheby's Auction. After several rounds of fierce competition, it finally dropped the hammer for 16 million pounds , plus a total of 18.582 million pounds (about 164 million yuan).
The sky-high price of "Love in the Trash Can" was sold this time. Compared with the 1.042 million pounds auctioned for the first time in October 2018, the value of the work after it was destroyed has increased by nearly 18 times. The original name of the work is "The Girl Holding a Balloon", which depicts a little girl holding a heart-shaped red balloon.
In October 2018, when the "Girl Holding Balloons" was just sold at the auction at Sotheby's Auction in London, the picture began to slide down from the frame and was cut into pieces by a built-in shredder hidden in the thick frame, which shocked the audience.
However, I don’t know whether it was intentional or whether this paper shredding device had a malfunction - fortunately: only half of the painting fell, and half of it remained intact in the picture frame. Shortly afterwards, Banks spoke out through the Internet and announced that it was his own actions. He later uploaded a video showing how he installed this small mechanism by himself.
Banks released the picture of him installing shredder behind the frame
According to Sotheby's, the collector who took the picture at that time was a long-term client of the auction house, a woman from Europe. The collector later said that he was stunned when he saw the painting self-destructed, "But I gradually realized that this unique work is worthy of being recorded in contemporary art history." So she happily accepted the semi-destructed painting and enjoyed the fruits of victory in the auction with the price of this collection that soared by nearly 18 times.
Art critics also generally agree that the incompletely successful destruction is equivalent to a brand new interpretation of the original work of performance art - an artwork that actually "self-harm" on the spot after being auctioned. Its unprecedented creativity obviously greatly enhances the original value of the artwork.
auction site (pictured according to Sotheby’s )
Three years later, the semi-destroyed painting was renamed "Love in the Trash Can". It started at the Contemporary Art Night Scene in Sotheby’s London for 2.5 million pounds. The bids of buyers soared. After just two minutes of competition, it was finally sold at a sky-high price of 16 million pounds. Before the auctioneer fell to the hammer, he humorously said that he was "very worried". Of course, there was no "moment" in this work.
This is also the highest auction record for Banks's works so far. The previous record for auction was the "Game Changer" he painted in 2020 for British medical staff fighting on the front line of the epidemic, which sold £16.8 million.
It is worth mentioning that Sotheby's London also stated that buyers who took this picture "Love in the Trash Can" can use cryptocurrencies (such as Ether , etc.) to pay the money.
Red Star News Reporter Qiao Xueyang
Edit Li Jie
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