Banksy strikes again....

theprestige said:
Sotheby's will go blind if they keep that up.
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:D

Art auctions are quite the circle-jerk, anyway. Investors need their values to rise for a good return. Auction houses need to boost their commissions and percentage fees with high values. Rubes need to be convinced that stuff has exorbitantly high monetary value.

Then we have Banksy, who was a daring anonymous artist that did unusually high quality street art without being seen. Now he is full-bore sellout in the circle jerk.
 
William Parcher said:
I won't be opened up by the new owner - and maybe never.
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Probably will need to be opened eventually. Sooner or later the batteries will start to leak, and could damage the rest of the artwork if they're not removed.

Depending on the battery technology, and how much drain the radio receiver places on the battery, that could be several years. It's possible that the radio receiver disconnected itself from the battery when the 'shred' event was triggered, so the drain on the battery could now be zero. Even if that is the case, the battery will still eventually age and present a danger to the artwork - though that might be decades away for some battery technologies.
 
ceptimus said:
Probably will need to be opened eventually. Sooner or later the batteries will start to leak, and could damage the rest of the artwork if they're not removed.

Depending on the battery technology, and how much drain the radio receiver places on the battery, that could be several years. It's possible that the radio receiver disconnected itself from the battery when the 'shred' event was triggered, so the drain on the battery could now be zero. Even if that is the case, the battery will still eventually age and present a danger to the artwork - though that might be decades away for some battery technologies.
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I have it on good authority that that would increase its value as further performance art, symbolizing the corrosive effects of the electronic age on the purity of art blah blah blah...
 
Information Analyst said:
"Banksy" is Robin Gunningham
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Yes, of all the rumoured candidates, he does seem the most likely.

As for this stunt itself, this guy seems to think that it's Very Important. I tend to agree more with Charlie Brooker about Banksy in general: "Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions"

Anybody who still thinks that this was actually shredded should take a look at the photos in the first article I've linked. Note how the part that's come out the bottom is the same width as the "window" on the frame. That's not how framing a picture works. The frame covers up a significant portion of the canvas. Also note that when you see "before" pictures that the girl's feet were right at the bottom, making it look like she was standing on the frame. Now look at the bottom of the shredded picture and ask yourself if that looks right, especially when compared to the sides.

Might even be a little narrower than the window, if you look at the right hand side.

Oh, and Sotheby's was totally in on it.
 
I propose an innovative new art project: shredding Sotheby's. Both the act itself and the resultant confetti rubble will be amazingly transformative visions of the intersectionality of the zeitgeist with the viewer's construction of the synergetic meaning of the text!
 
ceptimus said:
Probably will need to be opened eventually. Sooner or later the batteries will start to leak, and could damage the rest of the artwork if they're not removed.

Depending on the battery technology, and how much drain the radio receiver places on the battery, that could be several years. It's possible that the radio receiver disconnected itself from the battery when the 'shred' event was triggered, so the drain on the battery could now be zero. Even if that is the case, the battery will still eventually age and present a danger to the artwork - though that might be decades away for some battery technologies.
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I don't think that it will be opened eventually. The owner would make the decision anyway. The value could be reduced if the frame is disassembled.

One of the "surprises" inside might be that Banksy took effort to contain the batteries so that any leaking corrosive wouldn't damage the artwork or the frame.

I think it may be X-rayed, but the owner might not want that either.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Anybody who still thinks that this was actually shredded should take a look at the photos in the first article I've linked. Note how the part that's come out the bottom is the same width as the "window" on the frame. That's not how framing a picture works. The frame covers up a significant portion of the canvas. Also note that when you see "before" pictures that the girl's feet were right at the bottom, making it look like she was standing on the frame. Now look at the bottom of the shredded picture and ask yourself if that looks right, especially when compared to the sides.

Might even be a little narrower than the window, if you look at the right hand side.
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Banksy can make the canvas any size that he wants and he can also place it in the frame in unconventional ways.

That's not how framing a picture works.
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He can do it any way that he wants to in order to accomplish his goal. It does not have to conform to what we "know" about how picture framing "works". This is how magicians do what they do.
 
And wouldn't it be very Banksy for him to install a secondary mechanism that acts as a non-injurious booby trap which is triggered by removing the rear panel. He could use springs which don't require battery power.

His "next act" would be revealed if you try to open it up to look at the shredder or to get those batteries out. Several ounces of ink being splashed onto the canvas would be a really cool second act.

But hey, no matter what happens it only increases the value, right?
 
Presumably, auction houses will need to X-ray things in future, looking to see if there are any devices inside that can be remotely activated.

The next one might contain a bomb or a vial of poison gas or whatever.

You would have thought that security experts and insurers would have already considered such things - which lends credence to the idea that Sothebys were in on the Banksy stunt.

...of course, X-ray detectors can also be built into artworks.
 
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TragicMonkey said:
Smell is one of the senses! Bring on more rotting fish exhibits!
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Oh, it's on! Here's an $8 million dollar rotting fish artwork that was destroyed before it was sold. The fish was replaced causing some to question whether this shark of Theseus was actually the same artwork. Instead of insisting that his rotten shark art was the same work, Hirst should have declared it the first artwork created during a sale and renamed it "The Shark is in the Bin" so that it would double in value.

Swimming With Famous Dead Sharks
 
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William Parcher said:
Banksy can make the canvas any size that he wants and he can also place it in the frame in unconventional ways.
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It certainly would be unconventional to have a canvas that's narrower than the aperture appear to fill the frame.

Still, I'm happy to admit that I was wrong. I only looked at the right hand side of the picture because I noticed it didn't fill the frame. Had I looked at the left as well, I'd have noticed that it is actually the same size as the aperture, just shifted over.

I've drawn a couple of straight lines in Photoshop:

[imgw=800]https://i.imgur.com/EURpPEr.jpg[/imgw]

You'll note that the lines are completely straight, and are in line with the edges of the aperture. You'll also note that the right hand side of the picture below doesn't reach the line on the right, and that the left side of the picture goes over the line on the left. And finally you'll note that the canvas itself is completely straight.

Here's a close-up, with the contrast adjusted a little to make the picture stand out more against the white background:

[imgw=800]https://i.imgur.com/i7DZG4f.jpg[/imgw]

And here's the same with a couple of red lines added to emphasise the sides of the canvas:

[imgw=800]https://i.imgur.com/4jIutM5.jpg[/imgw]

Magic indeed.

1 roller and 2 separate pictures seems like the most parsimonious explanation, no?
 
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Oh, and if that's not convincing, then this also suggests that something isn't quite right:

[imgw=800]https://i.imgur.com/4UqBCve.jpg[/imgw]
 
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