Banksy Delivers the Ultimate Prank at Sotheby's Auction
(Bloomberg) -- It's looks like the ever-mischievous Banksy has pulled off the ultimate art prank.
Hours after his “Girl With Balloon” was destroyed at a Sotheby's auction in London following its sale to a phone bidder, an Instagram account tagged to Banksy suggested he was behind the incident.
“A few years ago I secretly built a shredder into a painting,” according to a post on the account. It then cited a quotation from Pablo Picasso that: “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”
A video on the same account shows a delighted auctioneer bringing the gavel down on the sale for 1.04 million pounds ($1.2 million). The camera then turns to the painting -- the canvas slides through the bottom of the frame, is half-shredded and is hurriedly removed from the room by two attendants. Cue footage of amazement and outrage.
Sotheby's said it's discussing what do next with the anonymous buyer, who was bidding by phone. The U.K.'s Press Association suggested that Banksy might even have been involved in the bidding process, while some observers posited the idea that whole event wasn't quite as unexpected as Sotheby's made out.
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