October 14, 2021
Shredded and Sold Again: Banksy's £18.6 Million Prank Pays Off
The Banksy painting that famously shredded itself at auction in 2018 returned in 2021 as 'Love Is in the Bin' — and sold for a record £18.6 million.
In 2018, the moment a Banksy 'Girl with Balloon' sold at Sotheby's for £1 million, a hidden shredder whirred to life and sliced the canvas into ribbons before a stunned room. The artist had pranked the art market live.
Renamed 'Love Is in the Bin', the half-shredded work returned to the very same saleroom in October 2021 — and sold for £18.6 million, a record for the elusive street artist and roughly eighteen times its pre-shredding price.
It was, Sotheby's said, 'the first artwork in history created live during an auction'. Banksy had tried to destroy the market's logic; instead, he made it pay handsomely.
Image: “The World of Banksy 2022, Brussels” — Miguel Discart, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.