Banksy, the street artist, had his painting Show Me The Monet sells at a starting price of £7.5m at auction.
The painting of Banksy sold at Sotheby, London, reached up to £7,551,600 in the auction platform. Initially, the reimagined painting is only expected to reach £3.5 to £5 million. After 10 bidders battling for nearly 13 minutes, the number came down to five. The matter followed with nine minutes of bidding amongst the five, after which the price shot up to £7 million.
Banky’s craft is the second most expensive painting after Devolved Parliament, which was sold for £12 million last year.
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Experts say that Show Me The Monet is one of the artist’s iconic works that went on sale.
Trash-filled but a classic oil painting
The now auctioned painting is a part of a collection called The Crude Oils. It was first displayed publicly during Banksy’s gallery exhibition 15 years ago.
The collection further includes works like Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers wilting or dead in their vase, Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks confronted by an angry man in Union Jack boxer shorts, and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe re-faced with Kate Moss.
The Monet painting was first created in 2005. It is inspired by the original oil painting, The Water Lily Pond, created by Oscar-Claude Monet in 1899. Claude Monet is a prominent French painter who revolutionized Impressionism in paintings.
Banksy recreated the painting and added upside-down shopping trollies and a fluorescent orange traffic cone. Commenting on his work, Head of the European Contemporary Art Alex Branczik stated:
“In one of his most important paintings, Banksy has taken Monet’s iconic depiction of the Japanese bridge in the Impressionist master’s famous garden at Giverny and transformed it into a modern-day fly-tipping spot”.
He further adds that the artist describes the society’s disregard for the environment and the growing and boundary-less consumerism in the painting.
A tribute to NHS
The street artist is known for his satirical artworks. Even though he remains anonymous, his works have turned heads all over the world. In October 2018, his work BalloonGirl went for auction in Sotheby’s auction house.
Just as the gravel dropped at £1.04 million, an alarm sounded from the painting, after which the canvas shred itself through a concealed shredder. It, however, stopped in between due to a technicality.
After the event, the painting was named Love is in the Bin, and the price went up by 50%. It depicts the MPs in the House of Commons as chimpanzees.
His latest works include young girl hula-hooping, which was created outside of a salon in Nottingham last week. He also paid tribute to the NHS workers by painting a boy dressed in overalls playing with an NHS nurse figurine in cape and mask. On the side, there was a trash can filled with Batman and with Spiderman figurines.
Image courtesy of LightField Studios/Shutterstock