It was announced last week that the woman who bought Banksy’s ‘Girl With Balloon’ will be going through with the purchase. And who could blame her? The prospect of owning a piece of ‘art history’, as she called it, is an enticing one to any investor, regardless of its condition.
The video documenting Banksy’s triumph has clocked over 12 million views since it was uploaded to his Instagram account, and one could certainly argue it highlights the disconnect between the intrinsic value of art and that ascribed to it by ever-changing tastes. But it would be wrong to give artistic credit for what is essentially a publicity stunt. Not least because it’s so unoriginal.
Does Banksy not know about Jean Tinguely’s ‘Study for an End of the World, No.2’ (1962), where giant, self-destructing towers caricatured the imminent threat of nuclear war? Or John Baldessari’s ‘Cremation Project’ (1970), in which his entire oeuvre was reduced to ashes in a bold renunciation of work he no longer felt was relevant (‘I really think this is my best piece to date’, he told a critic)?
Against the backdrop of such work, the live ‘creation’ of ‘Love is in the Bin’ at Sotheby’s reveals itself to be pure pastiche.
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