How could Banksy's farce increase its prices: "It's a part of the history of art"

In 2004, a young girl releasing a heart-shaped red balloon appeared stencilled on a wall on the south shore of London. He became one of the most famous and coveted creations of Banksy. This stencil was repeated in an edition consisting of 150 prints and 25 numbered paintings, as well as an unknown number of unique aerosol paints of varying sizes with variations, including painting $ 1.4 million worth of paintings. Sotheby's was one.

This 40-inch example, "acquired directly from the artist by the current owner in 2006," according to Sotheby's catalog, has established a new auction for a work created solely by Banksy. According to the Artnet database, one of the 20-inch-tall Girl With Balloon paintings was sold in March at £ 344,750, or around US $ 480,000, in Bonhams, London. Mr Andipa said that in 2006, he was selling these smaller edition paintings for £ 30,000, or around $ 55,000 at the time.

There was also something strange in the video that Banksy published Saturday on his Instagram page. Attracting 6.3 million views by Sunday morning, the video would claim to show the artist that he was secretly building a shredder in the painting "a few years ago."

If that was the case, would the stack of the shredder not have been replaced at some point? This in turn begs the question: was Banksy himself the owner who entered this stencil painting, which may or may not have been realized and framed "years ago", in the sale? Sotheby's, like all international auction houses, does not reveal the identity of its sellers, unless expressly requested.

And what about the identity of the man in the sales room that activated the remote shredding device? Could he have been himself the elusive "guerrilla graffiti"?

In 2008, the British newspaper The Mail on Sunday identified Banksy as Robin Gunningham, a former private high school student in the Bristol area, in the west of England. On Saturday, the Daily Mail noted the similarity between the person identified as Mr. Gunningham 10 years ago and a man taking a cell phone video in Sotheby's auction room on Friday. Another man, who was seen activating a remote control mechanism, was photographed in a post on the private Instagram page of Caroline Lang, president of Sotheby's Switzerland. He too was identified as Banksy by Ms. Lang.