Banksy posted a new video about the shredding of his famous Girl With Balloon painting, implying that it was supposed to have been completely destroyed in the stunt.

In the video, entitled Shred The Love, The Director’s Cut, Banksy reveals that he rehearsed for the prank, and that in practice runs the shredder hidden inside the frame had

“worked every time”.

On Instagram, the artist said:

“Some people think it didn’t really shred. It did. Some people think the auction house were in on it, they weren’t.”

Artist and art critic Kenny Schacter had this to say in a column on ArtNet,

“First of all, if the entire prank—with a crude device concealed within the artwork’s ridiculously oversize frame half-slicing-and-dicing the painting onstage as astounded auction specialists looked on—sounds like a giant PR stunt, know that the consigned artwork was inscribed ‘Thanks, Jo.’ (with a heart), and Banksy’s PR representative happens to be named Jo Brooks.

I’m told that someone from Banksy’s publicity team contacted Sotheby’s to sell the painting Girl With a Balloon, but that the consignment came with stipulations, more or less as follows:

a. the painting had to be hung in the salesroom during the sale;
b. it needed to be sold in the latter half of the proceedings; and,
c. it wasn’t to be examined out of the frame. As it’s not the norm to hang a relatively inconsequentially valued painting in the room (the pre-sale estimate was £200,000 to £300,000) during an evening auction, the house replied no.

…if the auction house did know that there was something in the works and didn’t tell prospective buyers, I thumbed through Elizabeth II’s Fraud Act of 2006, Chapter 35, to confirm that such an act of hanky-panky might very well qualify for

‘fraud by failing to disclose information.'”

The new half-shredded artwork has now been renamed Love Is In The Bin after being granted certification by Pest Control, Banksy’s authentication body.

Sotheby’s has confirmed that the buyer, a long-standing female client, still wants to take the work for the agreed price. Some experts believe the prank has increased the value of the artwork, possibly even doubled.

(via SkyNews, Artnet)