Banksy has posted a video to his website in which he implies the shredding of his million-pound artwork Girl with Balloon at a Sotheby’s auction in London was supposed to have been complete.
In the video posted on Tuesday entitled Shred the Love (the director’s cut), Banksy shows himself constructing the shredding mechanism inside a frame. It then cuts to the auction room and the moment of partial destruction. At the end, the video notes: “In rehearsals it worked every time ...” as it shows the piece going the whole way through the shredding machine.
The canvas was partially shredded after the hammer came down on a winning bid of £1.04m ($1.4m), to the shock of the crowd on 5 October. Banksy later posted an image on Instagram of the shredded work dangling from the bottom of the frame with the title “Going, going, gone … ”
“It appears we just got Banksy-ed,” said Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s senior director and head of contemporary art in Europe. The piece is now titled Love Is in the Bin.
The auction house said the winning bidder decided to buy it anyway at that price.
Much has been made about whether the famously anonymous artist had intended to keep at least part of the canvas intact. That raised speculation that the stunt would only increase the painting’s value.