China Art Daily, No. 242 Art Wealth
Banksy scribbled a painting "Aachoo!" on the wall of a house on Vail Street, Bristol, England. The property, which was originally worth only £300,000, instantly increased to £5 million Image: Banks official website
In 2021, the brightest star on the art market is Banks. The enigmatic British street artist has gained attention for his graffiti in public spaces that are full of poetry, satire and black humor. In the auction market in the first half of this year, Banksy became the fifth best-selling artist in the world's top ten artists, and the most profitable living artist. Without participating in the exhibitions of art institutions or supported by international blue-chip galleries, Banks has repeatedly ridiculed the contemporary art market through social networks and his own online sales and appraisal system, but has gained such amazing sales, which is undoubtedly a "subversion" of the traditional art market.
Create hotspots to play with social networks
American contemporary artist David Sully once said: "Art is not more popular than popularity." Today, the opposite is true – social media has become the most important indicator for most new generation collectors to determine whether to buy a work, and becoming an "internet celebrity" is almost the only way for artists to succeed.
In 2013, when Banks was working in a factory area near Willize, Queens, New York, he published the location of his new work on his personal website every morning, inviting all New Yorkers to visit. The "habit" of this work, which invited viewers to watch, was later moved to Instagram by Banks. Today, Banksy has about 11 million followers on Instagram and has reached generations of collectors around the world.
Banks Sale Ends Today Price: HK$47 Million 2021 Christie's Hong Kong Spring Auction Image: Christie's
In late 2020, Banks created a painting on the wall of a house on Vail Street in Bristol, England, titled "Aachoo! "The doodle, the picture is of a sneezing grandmother. Banks subsequently posted the work on his own Instagram. Within an hour, the number of retweets quickly exceeded one million, and the work was subsequently sent to YouTube's hot search list. The £300,000 property not only became a famous tourist attraction in the UK overnight, but also instantly increased to £5 million.
Banksy Forgive Us For Transgression Price: HK$64.112 Million Sotheby's Autumn Auction 2020 Image: Sotheby's
Constantly creating various hot events in public to "challenge authority" is the main reason why Banks is popular around the world. As early as 2004, he secretly brought his "Mona Lisa" into the Louvre in Paris and hung it on the wall for visitors to enjoy, until eight days later, when the staff discovered the extra painting. In the same way, his paintings invaded the British Museum, the Tate Museum in the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. He even made a batch of "counterfeit banknotes", changing the original Queen of England to Princess Diana on the banknotes, and the words on the banknotes were changed from "Bank of England" to "Banksy of England".
At one of Sotheby's's in London in 2018, when the auctioneer dropped the hammer and announced that the work "The Girl and the Balloon" was sold for £1.04 million, the painting automatically moved under the frame and was torn into a pile of notes by a shredder. Banks then posted a message on Instagram: "Going, going, gone..." Image courtesy of Instagram
What really made the world know Banks was an auction at Sotheby's in London in 2018, where his printmaking "Girl and the Balloon" sold at a high price, and just as the audience was clapping and celebrating, the picture frame suddenly sounded an alarm bell, and in full view of everyone, the painting in the frame slowly slid down, and the frame built-in shredder cut the painting into pieces of paper. Shortly after the auction ended, Banks shared a photo of the scene of the destruction of the painting on Instagram, along with the caption: "Raise the price, continue to raise the price, disappear." Earlier, Banksy also uploaded a video that clearly documented the whole process of implanting the shredder into the frame. He wrote in the video: "A few years ago I secretly placed a shredder in my work to prevent it from going to auction one day. After the incident, Banks' certification agent, Pest Control, issued a new certificate and confirmed the date of creation of the shredded work, and renamed it Love in the Trash. The buyer, who sold for "Girls and Balloons" for a record £1 million deal, also decided to keep the new work.
Arguably this is the most controversial art event of 2018. No matter how many people firmly believe that this is a mockery and counterattack of Capital by Banks, this matter is objectively a successful marketing. Two years later, in September 2020, at a Banx print sale at Sotheby's in London, all 23 prints sold at double the highest estimate – some even four or five times or even ten times the highest estimate. The winner of the entire auction was another painting, The Girl and the Balloon, which was bid 24 times, the most undervalued at £80,000, and ended up selling for five times the estimated price – £438,500. With 150 editions, Girls and Balloons set a new auction record. Yessica Marks, Director of Responsibility and Senior Printmaking Specialist at Sotheby's London, revealed that the seller bought the print for £275 in 2004 and it was after seeing the news that Sotheby's 'Girl and the Balloon' had been shredded at the 2018 sotheby's auction that she got in touch with Sotheby's and learned that the work was priced at £80,000 to £120,000 and decided to commission Sotheby's to sell it. Over 16 years, the work has added 1,600 times more fueled by Banksy's "performance art." In the upcoming Autumn Auction 2021, the renamed "Love in the Trash" will re-appear at Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Sale with an estimated value of 4 million to 6 million pounds (about 35.7 million to 53.6 million yuan), estimated at about 4 times the original price and 20 times the estimated value of 200,000 pounds at the first auction. The auction site is exactly where the work was destroyed three years ago, at Sotheby's New Bond Street Gallery.
Banksy Love in Trash 2018 Estimate: £4-6 million Image from: Sotheby's
After sotheby's destruction, Banks' every action had a direct impact on his market. Over the past five years, Banks' auction turnover has grown exponentially: $3 million in 2016, $7 million in 2017, $16 million in 2018, $29 million in 2019, $67 million in 2020, and $123 million in the first half of 2021. In just six months this year, Banksy sold 913 lots, covering all price ranges, while prices skyrocketed.
Build an ecosystem of personal collections
The huge demand for Banks' works in the secondary market was formed mainly because Banks maintained extremely tight control over the primary market for his works. For more than 10 years, Banks has built itself an independent collecting ecosystem.
Back in 2002, Banks released his first commercial prints through a number of printmaking galleries, including Tom Tom, the predecessor of Art Republic, and his assistant Steve Lazaridis, at graphics on Walls, which sold for between £200 and £300. Like trendy brands like Supreme, fans line up at the door of Brighton's Art Republic to snap it up whenever Banks releases a new collection. By 2007, the total amount of banks prints auctioned had increased 10-fold from the previous year, soaring from about $127,000 in 2006 to $1.3 million. Due to Banksy's initial laissez-faire attitude towards his work, a large number of Banksy's forgeries appeared on the market, driven by profits. To prevent counterfeits from circulating in the market, Banksy set up its own distribution and identification platform, Pest Control, in 2008 to certify and sell its own paintings, prints, sculptures and other forms of creation.
Banks exclusive agency platform Pest Control image from: Pest Control official website
As Banks' sole agency, Pest Control has a complete database of Banksy's works for collectors to check against when they wish to buy, and will also certify the works for a small fee, and if it is proved to be a fake, the appraisal fee will be refunded. In the eyes of mainstream auction houses, the only mark for identifying Banks prints and solo works is the certification of Pest Control, and for such certified works, the market demand continues unabated. Therefore, in addition to providing certification, Pest Control can also control the speed of certification of works sold on the primary market, thereby delaying the circulation of new works on the secondary market, preventing speculators from short-term scalping behavior, and avoiding Banks' works becoming a tool for "making quick money".
In this way, Banks used his Pest Control system to control the circulation of hundreds of thousands of single-page works or limited editions, establishing an unprecedented collection ecosystem outside the system of the traditional art market, and completely transforming the art market. Today, collectors who want to buy Banks' works will enter the field where the primary market supply is the smallest and the second market demand is the largest among contemporary artists. Banks said in a copyright notice from Pest Control that people can use images of Banksy's work as long as the use is non-commercial. This also means that ordinary art lovers are not Banksy's sales targets, and people who want to make money through Banks' works must first pay a higher cost.
Banksy Love in the Air Transaction Price: $12.903 Million 2021 Sotheby's New York Modern and Contemporary Art Evening Photo Credit: Sotheby's
Confrontation or manipulation
For more than 20 years, Banks has defended his identity indomitably – mysterious street artists who care about social issues, art "terrorists", rebels against authority... On the other hand, no matter what the purpose, he plays an active role in the sales of his works: on the one hand, he controls the primary market through an exclusive platform, and on the other hand, he promotes the secondary market by creating hot spots, and strives to prevent himself from being over-consumed. People do appreciate Banksy's unique rebellious spirit and the irony and black humor in his works, but more importantly, they recognize the reflection on reality in his works and the concern for social and humanistic issues. Because of this, acts such as destroying paintings on the auction floor and mocking buyers as "idiots" have doubled the value of their works. Whether Banks is manipulating capital in a way that is against capital or manipulating it may not be so important anymore. As such a special existence, Banks's market myth is difficult to replicate, but he may provide another way for artists to run their own works: in the era of the Internet of Everything, there may be a broader world outside the traditional market system. ■
Banks Vote for Love Sold Price: $1,853,775 London Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Photo Credit: Sotheby's