Banksy-Painting Sells for £16.75 Mn
A painting by the British street artist Banksy sold for a record £16.75 million ($23.1 million, 19.4 million euros) on Tuesday, with proceeds going to benefit state health service staff.
The painting, “Game Changer”, sold to an unnamed buyer for £14.4 million plus costs — the highest ever for a Banksy painting
The oil painting shows a boy holding aloft a nurse doll with Batman and Superman figures in a bin.
It first appeared at Southampton General Hospital on England’s south coast, during the first wave of the global coronavirus.
The artist — who first emerged out of Bristol’s graffiti scene in southwest England in the 1990s
left a note with the painting thanking hospital staff for their work battling the pandemic.
“Thanks for all you’re doing. I hope this brightens up the place a bit, even if it’s only in black and white,” he wrote.
Proceeds from the auction will go to NHS charities and a reproduction of the piece at the Southampton hospital.
The auctioneer hailed Banksy’s “incredible gesture” in donating the work.
“It is a Game Changer in every sense,” he said of the painting.
The auction price swiftly exceeded the pre-sale estimate of between £2.5 million ($3.5 million, 2.9 million euros) and £3.5 million.
Masked intermediaries talking into mobile phones relayed bids from around the world during the nail-biting sale.
The previous record auction price for a Banksy work in October 2019 was nearly £9.9 million at Sotheby’s auction house for “Devolved Parliament,” a painting showing parliament populated by chimpanzees.
Banksy-Painting Sells for £16.75 Mn
Symbol of Its Time
Christie’s said in a statement the painting was a departure from Banksy’s usual irreverent style and was instead “a personal tribute to those who continue to turn the tide of the pandemic”.
“As artwork, however, it will remain forever a symbol of its time: a reminder of the world’s real game changers
The painting may also have a political subtext though, as it was donated shortly after Prime Minister Boris Johnson
told the public antibody tests could be a “game changer” in the pandemic, only to have experts water the idea.
Speaking in a video shared by Southampton Hospitals Charity earlier this month, staff at the Southampton hospital thanked Banksy for the painting and shared their enthusiasm for the work.
Steph Gurney, a senior nurse with the hospital’s Acute Medical Unit, said the appearance of the painting had come as a “real shock and a surprise” and that it “meant so much that a world-renowned artist would want to donate a piece of work to our hospital”.
Banksy has continued to create other works during the pandemic. In July 2020, disguised as a cleaner,
he spray-painted a series of rats encouraging people to wear face masks on the London underground transport system.
In December, he drew a woman sneezing on the side of a house in Bristol.
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