A print sold for $1.4 million at auction, then shredded itself

This was the 2006 print by Banksy before the frame was triggered Friday to self-destruct.

Years ago, an anonymous British graffiti artist secretly built a shredder into a frame that displayed one of his most famous and popular prints: "Girl With Balloon."

On Friday, right after an auction hammer came down in London to announce the print had sold for $1.4 million, the frame started beeping then shredded the print in front of the stunned crowd.

The street artist, known as Banksy, posted a video on his Instagram page, showing a hooded man outfitting the frame with a shredder a few years ago "in case it was ever put up for auction."

According to the Washington Post, Sotheby's Auctions senior director said in a statement: "It appears we just got Banksy-ed." The statement by Alex Branczik described the incident as "the first time in auction history that a work of art automatically shredded itself after coming under the hammer."

It's unclear exactly how the artist pulled off the stunt, whether through remote-control, or another method to perfectly time the destruction. But the plan appeared to be years in the making as the gallery version that was up for sale was executed in 2006, according to Fortune.com. Also a mystery is how the frame maintained a power source over years to be able to spring into action on demand.

The stunt seized the attention of the art world, drawing accolades from other street artists who dislike the market-driven, institutionalized, mainstream economy of the gallery system. But even with half of the canvas now dangling in strands below the frame, the stunt ironically may have instantly doubled the value of the spray-painted print beyond the $1.4 million spent Friday.

The $1.4 million sale price tied a record for the artist's work set by another piece in 2008.

Branczik told the Art Newspaper on Friday that he was "not in on the ruse."

"We are busy figuring out what this means in an auction context," Branczik told the newspaper. "The shredding is now part of the integral art work. We have not experienced a situation where a painting has spontaneously shredded, upon achieving a record for the artist."

The artist has long expressed a dislike of art galleries reselling works of street artists, according to TechCrunch.com, down to creating a piece featuring an audience of bidders battling over a print that reads, simply, "I can't believe you morons actually buy this (expletive.)"

Banksy has been pretty consistent in backing up his anti-elitist rhetoric with some real to-the-people action, according to a March profile of the artist on Artspace.com. Banksy hadn't publicly released any new print editions from 2010 to 2017. When he does release new, signed editions, the outlet said, he sells them for considerably less than market value.

Video clips from Banksy's Instagram page, which has more than 3.3 million followers, showed that he or someone affiliated with him attended the auction at Sotheby's Friday and captured it on film.

"Going, going, gone..." Banksy wrote on one photo.

He captioned an Instagram post showing the video with a quote from Pablo Picasso: "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."

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