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Pablo Picasso once called painting a "sum of destruction". Banksy, an anonymous British graffiti artist and provocateur, confessed that he was thinking of Picasso by performing the most memorable farce of the art world for years.
As millions of people know, Banksy's, "Girl With Balloon," a self-destruct spray painting on canvas, was destroyed a few moments after its hit at a contemporary auction by Sotheby's London Friday. The auction took place during Frieze Week, when collectors from around the world traveled to central London for the Frieze art fair.
"Girl With Balloon" had just sold for $ 1.4 million when an alarm went off in the auction room. The canvas then began to slide inward of its frame and emerged in strips after being shredded by a remote control mechanism located at the rear of the frame.
Congratulations to Banksy. What a brilliant way to return the bird to the wealthy collectors, BS of the art world and the media in amazement: Put one of your own works at auction; watch the auctions match an auction record for your work; then, when the hammer falls, have it self-destruct.
Banksy was surpassed. But for what purpose?
"The urge to destroy is also a creative impulse," he wrote, citing Picasso, in an Instagram post after the event. Picasso was right: creation and destruction are closely linked. And some things, let's face it, must be defeated.
Destruction has long been a business card of avant-garde art. With Cubism, Picasso and Georges Braque destroyed the idea of conventional resemblances. The artists of the dada and surrealist movements, marked by the irrationality of the First World War, tried to destroy the reason itself. And in 1931, Joan Miro said: "I have the intention to destroy, destroy everything that exists in the painting."
When he was told to Miro that despite the rhetoric he was still painting, he replied, "What can I say? I can not be anything other than a painter. Every challenge to painting is a paradox – from the moment this challenge is expressed in the work. "
It's easy to imagine Banksy, who is doing very well in the art market nowadays, expressing a similar feeling.
Closer to home, Banksy's compatriot Michael Landy shocked the British public when in 2001 he collected all of his 7,227 assets – including his car (a Saab), his toothbrush, his passport and his birth certificate, and even works of art. – Disassemble larger items, catalog them, put them on trays on a treadmill and put them in a machine that crushes, shreds and sprays them. All this was played in public, in a storefront of central London.
In many ways, Banksy's farce looks like a lighter version of Landy's work, "Break Down," and has seen the artist destroy works by his friends Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin (two megastars from the world of art).
Why light? Only because, although both actions play in a show economy, Landy's revealed a genuine commitment: when "Break Down" was over, Landy had literally no good.
Banksy, we can assume, is doing very well. His criticism of the trade in the art world – which deserves all the criticism he receives – did him no harm.
Banksy is a genius provocateur. But his gestures and his gags have a kind of integrated futility, perhaps analogous to his painting with the integrated shredder: they are only designed to shake languages. They will not change anything.
In fact, it has already been suggested that Banksy's "Girl With Balloon" will be more valuable in the shredded state than it was before. If that were the case, it would be a direct consequence of the artist's genius in advertising.
What is the real problem here? Is it a system that values art in monetary terms so that it is traded on the market? Or is it a system tied to the motto of advertising and personal promotion?
If this is the last case, Banksy is deeply involved.
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