Will Gompertz on Banksy's shredded love is in the trash ★★★★★

I confess, I was wrong.

When I said a few weeks ago (Review of September 29) that for a century artists have not failed to outwit and outperform Marcel Duchamp (the French conceptual artist who placed a urinal in a gallery in 1917), I did not realize that there was a piece of art hanging on the walls of a London auction house, which was about to do it.

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This "Moment" at Sotheby's the other day, when Banksy's Girl with Balloon is sold for £ 860,000 (a little over a million) with additions) and it's quickly self-destroyed in front of a cluttered auction room was at the height of all the ironically ironic works of Duchamp. .

Before our eyes, the familiar image of Banksy, the girl holding a balloon, for which an unknown lady paid an incredibly high sum, was turned into an entirely new play, retrospectively titled by the artist, Love is in the Bin.

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"At first I was shocked," said the successful bidder and proud owner after deciding to keep his job, "but I realized that I would end up with my own piece of history." l & # 39; art. "

And that's what she did.

The idea of ​​destroying a work to make another became a genre of the post-Duchamp genre, which was the former master of the art cascade. In 1953, for example, Robert Rauschenberg had erased a drawing by the famous Dutch artist Willem de Kooning. The American then spent two months erasing the original image before mounting the now blank sheet of paper in a golden frame on which his friend Jasper Johns had written the words Erased of Kooning Drawing. Robert Rauschenberg.

In light of this, and for the sake of clarity, the subject of this review is not a Banksy 2006 canvas in a false Victorian frame, but the new work done by the artist via a remote control, in the auction room October 5th. 2018. The one with the torn canvas hanging at the bottom of the frame, which is on display at Sotheby's, London throughout the weekend.

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That's what I think of the love is in the trash. One will come to consider one of the most important works of art of the early twenty-first century.

This is not a large painting that can be compared to a late Rembrandt, nor to a sculpture that rubs Michelangelo's David, but in terms of conceptual art emanating from Duchamp's Dadaist sensibility, he is exceptional.

It was brilliant in design and execution. Let's take his initial creation, which was a superb performance piece of site-specific, mechanically assisted performance: a captivating performance in a captivating performance, which showed through a dark satire how art had become a real asset. investment to invest auctioned to ultra-rich trophy hunters.

As an action, this was reminiscent of the K Foundation's show of burning a million books on the island of Jura in 1994. The difference here was that the object destroyed by a million pounds that Banksy had destroyed could be worth more, which, if you think about it, tells you everything you need to know about a world of cynical art and its values.

Imagine that you saved all your money to buy a painting that you really liked and that just when you were going to take it home, someone came and shredded it.

Would you like to get your money back?

Would you be angry?

Of course, you liked this piece.

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Sotheby & # 39; s

But contemporary art is not valued for its intrinsic aesthetic qualities (although this is how it is presented to us), it is almost solely based on the reputation of l & # 39; artist. All that matters is the brand, whether it 's a Banksy, a Koons or a Kusama. For many collectors, art has become a class of assets.

As a result, post-event discussions were not about art but about capital. Will shredded work be worth more or less? Clandestine calls were made, suggesting that potential buyers were already lining up to buy it, if it were to return to the market. Speculation mounted.

Maybe everything was a joke developed by Banksy.

He could have auctioned the piece through a partner, then brought it for the colossal sum of 1 million pounds, knowing full well that the sale would not be realized because the work was about to to be destroyed.

You would not let him go, is not it?

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And what about the shredder?

How did it work?

Sotheby was in the know?

If not, how bad is its safety not to spot a built-in metal gear with (I suppose) a remote control device installed?

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Duchamp would have liked everything.

The provocation, the mystery (he signed his urinal R. Mutt to hide his identity), the creation by destruction (he drew a goatee on a postcard of the Mona Lisa to create an original work of art), the delicate question of the nature of the art.

What is love in the trash?

Is it a painting? Or is it now a piece of conceptual art? Or should it be classified as a sculpture? Or is it garbage?

Who's deciding?

Who knows?

Duchamp would say that it's up to you to decide.

My opinion? It is art. Made by an artist that many do not value but that I do. Why? Because he has something to say.

You may not agree with him, but at least he creates an art that enters the public consciousness: an art that is in the world and not detached from it. Art that raises the question that needs a broadcast.

Banksy makes art that, as Hamlet said, holds "… The mirror up to nature: show to virtue its peculiarity, make fun of its own image, as well as the age and the body of time its form and its pressure."

And what piece of art better captures the spirit of our times than Love in the Bin? I can not think of one.

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