New Banksy Video Suggests Shredded Painting Stunt Didn't Go Entirely To Plan
Banksy stunned the art world this month with the partial shredding of his “Girl With Balloon” artwork moments after it sold at Sotheby’s auction house in London for $1.4 million.
But a new video that the guerilla street artist shared to YouTube on Tuesday suggests the stunt was slightly botched.
The clip, titled “Shred The Love,” purportedly shows Banksy, originally from Bristol in southwest England, testing out the secret shredding mechanism that he’d inserted into the frame prior to the sale.
“In rehearsals it worked every time,” a note reads — before showing a painting being entirely shredded by the hidden device.
Check out the video above.
At Sotheby’s, however, the spray-paint and acrylic on canvas only went halfway through the shredder.
Banksy’s new video also showed extended footage from the auction house on the day of the painting’s sale, and offered further insight into how the prank was pulled. It revealed that a remote-control button was pressed by someone inside the venue to activate the cutting mechanism.
Banksy, whose identity has never been confirmed, also cleared up two theories surrounding the stunt with this post on Instagram:
“Some people think it didn’t really shred. It did,” he wrote. “Some people think the auction house were in on it, they weren’t.”
Banksy has since renamed the partially shredded work as “Love Is In The Bin.” Its unidentified winning bidder has opted to continue with the purchase of the piece.
“When the hammer came down last week and the work was shredded, I was at first shocked, but gradually I began to realize that I would end up with my own piece of art history,” the unnamed purchaser said, per Sotheby’s.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
