Banksy painting ‘self-destructs’ on podium

A Banksy painting has “self-destructed” on the auction podium at Sotheby’s in London after being sold for over £1m, in one of the most audacious art pranks thought to have been carried out by the street artist.

With an estimate at £200,000-£300,000, “Girl With Balloon” was subject to brisk bidding at the Contemporary Art Evening Sale on Friday night until the hammer went down on the winning bid of £860,000, given by telephone, at around 9pm. With buyer’s premium, the sale came to £1,042,000.

Shortly after sale concluded, however, the canvas was shredded by a mechanism apparently hidden within the base of the frame, with most of the work emerging from the bottom in strips.

“We’ve just been Banksy’ed,” said Alex Branczik, senior director at Sotheby’s, speaking after the incident.

“We have not experienced this situation in the past . . . where a painting spontaneously shredded, upon achieving a [near-]record for the artist. We are busily figuring out what this means in an auction context,” he said.

The last lot of the evening, Sotheby’s described the work ahead of the sale as “authenticated by Pest Control”, the handling services organisation that acts on Banksy’s behalf. It was signed and dedicated on the reverse and had been acquired by the vendor directly from the artist in 2006, the auction house said.

Depicting a girl losing or letting go of a red, heart-shaped balloon, a common subject for the activist and street artist, the spray-painted canvas was contained in the artist’s frame, which staff surmised contained a remotely activated shredding mechanism. It was not clear whether the artist had attended the auction in person to deliver the coup de grâce to his work.

Where a work suffers damage while in the care of an auction house, it would not normally expect any buyer to honour the purchase and may cancel a sale. However, there was speculation after the Banksy sale as to whether the shredded painting would have risen in value, given its status as the subject of one of the greatest pranks to have been played on the art market.

Sotheby’s said in a statement: “We have talked with the successful purchaser who was surprised by the story. We are in discussion about next steps.”


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