A Banksy canvas sells for more than £1 million, then partially shreds itself inside its frame. The buyer keeps it. Three years later, the altered work sells for £18.6 million.
Sold. Shredded. Sold again.
On Friday, 5 October 2018, Sotheby’s in London sold Banksy’s Girl with Balloon for £1,042,000, including the buyer’s premium.
Then the frame started doing something frames are not generally included to do.
A concealed shredder activated. The canvas moved downward through the mechanism, leaving its lower portion hanging beneath the frame in strips.
The artwork had not disappeared. It had become a different-looking purchase in front of the people who had just watched it sell.
The familiar girl and heart-shaped balloon belonged to a painting on canvas—not simply a poster being fed through an office shredder.
Nor was the entire canvas destroyed. Partial shredding is the important distinction: enough remained to form the altered work that would subsequently return to auction.
Banksy later released a video suggesting that the mechanism had been intended to shred the whole canvas. That is the artist’s account of the plan, rather than an independently established explanation of every mechanical detail.
The purchaser proceeded with the transaction at the original price.
Pest Control, Banksy’s authentication body, certified the resulting work under a new title: Love is in the Bin.
A damaged purchase had acquired an authenticated new identity.
On Thursday, 14 October 2021, it returned to the same London auction house. This time the bidding reached £16 million before fees.
With the buyer’s premium, the reported sale total was £18,582,000.
Comparing the two sale totals on the same fee-inclusive basis, the second was approximately 17.8 times the first. That comparison is not a calculation of the seller’s net profit.
The result does not prove that shredding any painting increases its value. This particular work had an authenticated transformation and a widely documented auction-room history.
It also does not establish that Sotheby’s secretly organized the intervention, or that every claimed detail of Banksy’s intention can be treated as fact.
The documented sequence is quite sufficient: a sale, a hidden shredder, a buyer who continued with the purchase, and a much larger sale three years later.
Less intact canvas. A considerably larger bill.
An artwork partially shreds itself immediately after its sale, is authenticated as a newly titled work, and later sells for approximately 17.8 times the original fee-inclusive total. The attempted destruction becomes part of the object’s auction history.
The canvas lost strips. The price gained a digit.
Evidence status
Sources
Auction house’s contemporary event record
Original language: EnglishCompleted purchase and authentication
Sotheby’s — Love is in the Bin Created Live at Auction · 11 October 2018
Original language: EnglishArtist’s later explanation, reported contemporaneously
The Art Newspaper — Banksy video reveals shredding mechanism failed · 18 October 2018
Original language: EnglishResale record and independent fee distinction
Sotheby’s — Banksy Brings Down the House · 14 October 2021
The Art Newspaper — Shredded Banksy sells for £16m hammer, £18.6m with fees · 14 October 2021
Original language: English