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You've probably heard about Banksy's chart sold last week at Sotheby's in London for $ 1.4 million and then immediately. jagged in the middle of the auction room via a remote controlled device.
The event is one of the most relevant and timely exchanges we have seen between the market, the artist and the public. But you may not have examined the full scope of the act. It can also be argued that this work is the most expensive performance art work ever sold at auction.
In the process of destruction, painting has become a symbol of growing acceptance and integration of the culture of performance in the art market. And in particular, it may also be the first performance – a medium that has proved difficult to market – has been associated with to climb market value.
Performance or not?
Certainly, one could argue that it is not a performance, but of a work sold as a static canvas in a frame, offered for sale as another on a unsuspicious market.
Surprised spectators react like Banksy Girl with a ball self-destruct at Sotheby's.
But let's look at things differently. Presumably, at least some people were in the plane: the New York Times reported Sotheby's employees were amused rather than shocked by his spontaneous destruction and, more importantly, the job was placed as the grand finale of the sale. It therefore seems safe to assume that some Sotheby's employees, if not the buyer and the seller, participated in the game (although the auction house denied it).
Art is a matter of intention, noted Banksy on his Instagram account that he had always wanted this event to happen. He explained that he had incorporated a shredder into the painting in case it would be auctioned. In other words, he has always planned to activate it at some point (an auction) with a defined audience (the people attending the sale).
Like any work of art on the scene, Banksy's needed an audience to be able to complete it in real time. By combining two combustible factors – action and public participation – the artist realized his intention: to make a statement about a value that could not have been articulated otherwise.
So what does it mean?
Nobody has yet discussed this sale as a performative art work. But a few hours after the event, a discussion on social media and in the New York Times was partly focused on the new value created by the law. "We could say that work is now more valuable," Alex Branczik, Sotheby's contemporary art director m said.
By shifting from shredding to peak value, we jumped a step. We have not yet evaluated the impact of this change on the performance art's growing ability to change expectations. If the performance is what raised the value, then we could say that the performance itself pushed the work beyond the 1.4 million dollars made at the Sotheby's evening sale. If indeed the artist, the collector and the seller were at the rendezvous, their collaboration to create this live show also helped to create its value.
Having sold performances in my day as a gallery owner, I think this marks a turning point for artistic performance as well as for marketing strategies around live experiences. Ten years ago, selling a performance was unheard of and the use of brand positioning strategies to promote art was considered a left.
Now these reserves have evaporated. This sale of Banksy is the culmination of a change of a decade, largely unconscious. He revealed the potential of the art of performance to subvert the traditional model of art selling and buying. At the same time, it also reveals a potentially more worrying development: the growing potential of marketing, more than expertise, to establish the value of art.
Banksy's Girl with a ball appeared to be shredding after selling for $ 1.4 million at Sotheby's on Friday night. With the permission of Sotheby's.
A brief history of auction performance
The sale of Banksy is not the first time that an ambitious market theater plays a major role in the creation of artistic value. Last year, we saw the power of the brand when the Leonardo da Vinci program Salvator Mundi Christie's New York for $ 450.3 million. Although many scholars have questioned the state of work – and some even questioned its authenticity – the Christie's global marketing campaign unleashed paved the way for the achievement of a record for any auctioned art work.
The sale of Banksy also echoed the Sotheby's event organized almost exactly 10 years ago, when the auction house teamed up with Damien Hirst to sell his brand new works fresh from the studio to the infamous "Beautiful Inside My Head Forever" auction, outstanding decades of the custom of the art market.
All of these examples raise the question: what happens when the power of marketing outweighs the original intent and context of the work of an artist, to the point of questioning the know-how that is at the heart of the services offered by auction houses or merchants
Today, the anticipated reaction of the public explains how art is presented – at auction, in galleries and art fairs, as well as in museums. It's also an indication of how things might continue to change. With the rise of performance and event culture over the last decade, as well as the interest generated by the experiences considered rewarding, we leave much of the traditional game book. However, if the company values the art through social exchanges rather than through exhibitions and studies, this raises other issues. How, and more importantly, who defines the value of contemporary art?
Elizabeth Dee is the co-founder of Independent art fairs in Brussels and New York and Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York. His next publications include Every future has a price: 30 years after infotainment in East Village New York and In the eyes of others: Hungarian artists of the sixties and seventies published by Distributed Art Publishers.
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