Love is in the bin

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Love is in the bin
Banksy , 2018
Spray paint and acrylic on canvas,
half shredded
101 × 78 cm × 18 cm
Private ownership, permanent loan from the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

Love is in the Bin (German: Love is in the bucket ) is the title of a work of art by British street artist Banksy , whichwas createdduring an auction in October 2018 as part of an art intervention at the Sotheby’s auction house. A plan of the artist was following his painting Girl with balloon ( English Girl with Balloon ) - the real subject of the auction - immediately after sale to an undisclosed European Offeror before the eyes of all present by a hidden under shredder sliced in half into thin strips . Thiscut upthe painting Girl with Balloon in half, creating a new work of art that was given its new name a short time later. The picture has been on permanent loan at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart since March 7, 2019.

The paintings

Girl with balloon
Banksy , 2006
Spray paint and acrylic on canvas
as part of the artist
101 × 78 cm × 18 cm
Privately owned

Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

The original painting was made in 2006 and repeats one of the most iconic motifs from Banksy's graffiti . It shows a little girl in side view, who is standing in the wind and reaching for a red and heart-shaped balloon that is flying away. The painting has a gold-colored frame 18 cm deep. According to the auction house, it was unique .

The motif of the painting has been graffito in several locations in London since 2002 and on numerous art prints , posters and postcards . According to the British daily The Guardian , it was "voted the most popular work of art in Great Britain" in 2017 and was used for the first time as a motif on a house wall on Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch in east London. It became famous through a campaign by the artist to support refugees from the Syrian civil war .

prehistory

The artist Banksy, who in spite of all the prominence does not want to reveal his identity, gave the painting Girl with Balloon to the current previous owner in 2006 after his three-day show, which took place under the title Barely Legal in a Los Angeles department store. In the event that the picture was put up for auction against his will, he had built a technology into the picture frame - similar to a document shredder - which could be used to shred the picture. In his YouTube video titled Sotheby's, October 5th 2018 , which he published on his YouTube channel the day after the auction, Banksy revealed his plan and showed the open-back picture frame with the built-in blades . How the process of destruction can be triggered has not been shown. Banksy's spokeswoman Jo Brooks confirmed the authenticity of the recording and assured that Sotheby's had not been informed of the artist's plans.

Although not much is known about the artist, something is known about his motives - for example, that he despises capitalism . A deep rejection of the art business characterizes his work, the ZDF announced on October 6, 2018 in its program today . The German wave (DW) mentioned his aversion to the commercialization of his art, exhibitions he refuse. "The anonymous street art artist is famous for playing with his audience and the mechanisms of the art market ," according to the news magazine Der Spiegel .

The auction

On October 5, 2018, Sotheby's in London put the painting up for sale, expressly with the artist's frame. It was the last auction that day. No sooner had the highest bidder for a sum of 1.04 million pounds (1.18 million euros ) been awarded when an alarm sounded and then the picture slipped into the lower part of the frame, which it left again cut into strips. The cut was made in such a way that about the upper half of the painting with the red balloon flying away remained intact in the frame, while the other half with the figure of the girl hung from the lower end of the frame, cut into narrow longitudinal strips. A short time later, the work was removed from the wall and hidden from the astonished auction visitors. A video about this unusual process - according to the concept of Fluxus - has been published by numerous media.

The Guardian described Banksy's action as "one of the bold stunts in art history," quoting Joey Syer, co-founder of the MyArtBroker website , who believed the work had gained at least 50% in value. Alex Branczik, the director of the auction house for contemporary art in Europe, described the action as “a little piece of Banksy genius”.

Banksy left a brief comment on his Instagram account: “Going, going, gone” - the English version of the usual exclamation of an auctioneer for the first, second and third  - and quoted Pablo Picasso as saying “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge ”.

After the auction

At first it was puzzled whether the sale would be reversed, but the auction winner, a “European collector and long-time customer of Sotheby's”, decided to accept the shredded picture. At first she was “shocked”, but then understood it as her “own piece of art history”. A week after the auction, Branczik also announced that Banksy had not destroyed a work of art, but created one - and that was the first time that it happened during an auction.

On October 11, 2018, the art magazine Monopol announced that Banksy had declared his former painting Girl with Balloon a new work of art and named it Love is in the Bin . His agency Pest Control had sent Sotheby's a certificate confirming the authenticity and title of the new work. On the same day, Sotheby's announced that it would present the new work to the public on October 13th and 14th in the London offices. There was hardly any reports about it. The Chinese news agency Xinhua published a short note with a series of photos in China Daily , an English-language daily newspaper of the People's Republic of China .

On October 17, Banksy posted another video on his YouTube channel entitled Shredding the Girl and Balloon - The Director's half cut , fueling speculation that he wanted to destroy the painting completely. Among other things, it shows in detail the auction process and at the end a scene introduced with the comment "In rehearsals it worked every time ..." (German: During the test run it worked every time ), in which an image of the same motif is completely shredded. This video alone had three million views in the first two weeks after it was uploaded . Zeit Online concludes from the Banksys video on its intention.

The magazine Cicero , which is dedicated to political culture, published an interview on October 23 with the cultural critic Georg Seeßlen on the question of whether the action was Banksy's calculation or a marketing gag. In the introduction, Seeßlen commented on Banksy's art in general:

“Every picture, every appearance is part of this meta-work of art, part of something that Joseph Beuys would probably have included under his idea of ' social sculpture '. Like it or not. You just can't ignore it. "

- Georg Seeßlen : Cicero

Otherwise Seeßlen left it open as to whether the destruction of the painting would not succeed or not. In its current state, the work of art says “something about the contradictions between the art market, the art business and art interests of us normal people”. Banksy's idea is not new. Interventions by the artist after the completion of a work, according to Seeßlen, are part of an “art mythology” which, among other things, should show “that works of art are not just objects that change hands”. Seeßlen answered the question of whether Sotheby's would have been inaugurated by pointing out that an auction house may say a lot, the truth is not always part of it. The art critic responded to talk that Banksy himself had offered the painting for sale and then bought it with the brief hint that all these rumors would become “part of the meta-work of art Banksy”. He reacted calmly to the initial question. This is a possible contradiction and whoever wants to remain free of contradictions in the art world has to "forego art or pretend that the contradictions don't exist". And Banksy at least makes the contradictions visible. He invites you to take part in the discourse and “do not accept the fetishization and capitalization in art without being contradicted”. In his final personal comment, he stated that Banksy's works were "really art".

The auction house countered the suspicion that Banksy might have let Sotheby's know about his plans in advance with a quote from Steve Lazarides, the former manager of Banksy: “I worked with him for twelve years, the idea of ​​cooperating with an institution performing an action runs completely against his philosophy. "

Media reports

Both German-speaking and British media reported on the event. The news magazine Der Spiegel, for example, was concerned with the question of whether the artist himself would have been there and triggered the mechanism, and whether the buyer would still have to pay the negotiated purchase price. Sotheby's told the Financial Times that negotiations are in progress with the buyer.

The assumption that Banksy might have been present was particularly fueled by the artist Pierre Koukjian. He is personally acquainted with Banksy and attended what he considered to be a "turning point in the history of contemporary [...] conceptual art " and the buyer a lucky one.

On October 7, 2018, journalists Alex Rühle and Laura Weissmüller put together a number of arguments for their assumption that Sotheby's must have known about the planned destruction. Also the Cologne auctioneer Henrik Hanstein could hardly imagine in the show West ART on October 8th that the auction house had not noticed the peculiarity of the frame, because for various reasons it was a principle to "frame" every painting on delivery. Otherwise he thinks the idea and staging are clever and original. The artist achieved his goal: "Criticizing the hype with contemporary art".

Curiosities

On October 8, 2018 Carolin Stroebele went in their commentary seems the question of whether Banksy critics or beneficiary is the art market. With her title Macht zur Kunst, what is ruined for you , she plays on the well-known slogan, Power to break what makes you broken , which became popular in the 1970s. Your text consists of incomplete sentences. It begins with the words "Unfortunately the article destroyed itself when it was published" and ends with an allusion to Georg Büchner's drama Dantons death : "Video recordings eats children".

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Latest Banksy Artwork 'Love is in the Bin' Created Live at Auction. Sotheby's, October 11, 2018, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Anny Shaw: Banksy renames shredded painting Love Is In the Bin as work sells to winning bidder after a week of negotiation. In: The Art Newspaper. October 11, 2018, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgart Germany: Stuttgarter Staatsgalerie: Banksy's shredder picture comes permanently to Stuttgart. Retrieved January 24, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c d A few years ago I secretly built a shredder into the frame. In: The world . October 7, 2018, accessed October 8, 2018 .
  5. ↑ a b c 67.Banksy. Girl with balloon. Sotheby’s , October 5, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 (English).
  6. ^ Banksy heart balloon, East London. In: artofthestate.co.uk. Archived from the original on October 9, 2018 ; accessed on October 7, 2018 (English).
  7. ↑ a b Banksy auction stunt leaves art world in shreds. In: The Guardian . October 6, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Anna Steiner: Self-destructive Banksy picture. Easy come easy go. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine . October 6, 2018, accessed October 8, 2018 .
  9. ^ Peter Bowes: 'Guerrilla artist' Banksy hits LA. In: BBC News. September 14, 2006, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  10. ↑ Sotheby's, October 5th 2018 on YouTube , accessed October 7, 2018.
  11. ↑ banksyfilm on YouTube
  12. ^ A b Anny Shaw: Sotheby's 'Banksy-ed' as painting 'self-destructs' live at auction. In: The Art Newspaper. October 5, 2018, accessed October 8, 2018 .
  13. ↑ At the moment of the auction. Sotheby's: Banksy artwork destroys itself. In: ZDF today. October 6, 2018, accessed October 8, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Auction at Sotheby's: Banksy work 'Girl with Balloon' destroys itself. In: Deutsche Welle. October 6, 2018, accessed October 8, 2018 .
  15. ↑ a b c d Banksy artwork self-destructed after auction. In: Spiegel Online. October 6, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  16. ↑ a b c Street artist Banksy. Millions of art work of art destroys itself. In: n-tv. October 6, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Horror shortly after the auction. Banksy artwork shreds itself. In: n-tv. October 7, 2018, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  18. ↑ a b 'I was shocked' - Bidder comments on the Banksy image. In: world. October 12, 2018, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Buyer wants to keep the destroyed Banksy picture. In: Zeit Online. October 12, 2018, accessed November 1, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Mattha Busby: Woman who bought shredded Banksy artwork will go through with purchase. In: The Guardian. October 11, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  21. ↑ a b Banksy re-titled work created by shredding. In: monopoly . October 11, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  22. ^ Xinhua : Sotheby's presents Banksy's 'Love is in the Bin' in London. In: China Daily . October 13, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  23. ↑ Shredding the Girl and Balloon - The Director's half cut on YouTube , October 17, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018.
  24. ↑ Banksy wanted to completely shred artwork at auction. In: Zeit Online. October 18, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  25. ↑ a b c Alexandra von Michel: Banksy not only makes art, he is art. Interview with Georg Seeßlen. In: Cicero. October 23, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  26. ↑ Associated Press : Banksy Artwork Self-Destructs Just After $ 1.4 Million Sale. In: The New York Times . October 6, 2018, accessed October 10, 2018 .
  27. ↑ Alex Rühle, Laura Weissmüller: Banksy's shredding prank raises questions. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. October 7, 2018, accessed October 9, 2018 .
  28. ↑ First, second, shredded! Banksy picture destroys itself. In: West ART . October 8, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018 .
  29. ↑ Carolin Ströbele: Make art what you break. In: Zeit Online. October 8, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018 .