Earlier this month, the art world gasped as a Banksy painting that had just sold at auction for $1.4 million just up and partially shredded itself. Now Banksy wants us to know that the whole damn thing was supposed to be shredded to bits.
Charming!
Banksy makes the reveal in a video posted on Wednesday, explaining that in practice runs before the auction, the entire painting was shredded to bits, leaving an empty frame and a pile of scraps.
Of course, on the big day, the shredder malfunctioned because you can never trust a machine to do its damn job when you want to make an artistic statement.
The buyer has said they plan to keep the painting anyway and some have suggested the partially shredded version is actually worth more now than if it was intact because what really is art, anyway, if not a game of one-up trolling all for the purposes of profit?
