Banksy, a British street artist whose identity is known to only a handful of friends, caused a sensation this month when one of his paintings began shredding itself, just after selling for $1.4 million (1.2 million euros). Experts say "Girl with Balloon" is now probably worth even more because the stunt created such a massive media stir. Oliveux predicted that if anything out of the ordinary happens in Paris, "it won't be a repeat" of the stunt that flabbergasted a room of champagne-sipping auction-goers at Sotheby's in London. For one thing, the frames around the three paintings up for grabs are on the slender side, meaning it would be difficult to hide a shredding device of the kind used in London, which Banksy concealed under a thick wooden frame.
Background checks
Artcurial has nonetheless done background checks on attendees-not least after speculation that it may have been Banksy himself who triggered the shredding device inside the room at Sotheby's. "We've asked them to identify themselves, we've made a few enquiries," Oliveux said. The sale, which also features other celebrated street artists such as France's JR and US duo FAILE, includes three silkscreens by Banksy as well as a plastic statuette of a rat holding a paintbrush. Oliveux acknowledged there was more interest in this sale than there would have been pre-shredding.
The Banksy works have been on show at Artcurial's elegant auction house on the Champs-Elysees roundabout, and many visitors have been pausing to take a look. As for the shredding of "Girl With Balloon"-now renamed "Love Is In The Bin"-Banksy has admitted things didn't go according to plan. He posted a video on YouTube showing it was supposed to have been fully shredded, and that during test-runs it worked perfectly each time. But when the prank was finally carried out, only the bottom half of the painting shredded-because, he revealed, it got stuck. The woman who had just bought the work for £1,042,000 -- a female European collector whose identity has not been revealed-said she was stunned when the device began whirring into motion. "I was at first shocked, but gradually I began to realize that I would end up with my own piece of art history," Sotheby's quoted her as saying. Alex Branczik, head of Sotheby's Contemporary Art in Europe, has meanwhile hailed the self-destructing painting as "the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction". "Banksy didn't destroy an artwork in the auction, he created one," Branczik added.-AFP