The girl is dead. Her hope lives on.
An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
181–190 of 301 posts
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#182I'm honestly struck by how _cheap_ this piece was sold for. Banksy is a household name unlike most contemporary artists. Pieces by Jeff Koons have sold for 50 million but Banksy struggles to cross the 1 million mark? I'm surprised that there are no tech millionaires or Wall Street Titans buying up the pieces.
> ...but Banksy struggles to cross the 1 million mark?
Well, now you have to add in a "risk factor" that the work you buy doesn't survive intact. Which could go either way -- non-shredded Banksy original vs. Banksy shredded original print.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
What gives you the right to decide what other people do with their stuff? How would you feel if someone came along and said "I don't think two orders of magnitude is a reasonable level of wealth inequality, so I'm taking everything you own to give it to poor Africans"? Imagine two people both making $100k/year. One saves/invests half their income, the other saves 0%. In 20 years, one has a million dollars of savings,…
> The saver, by exercising restraint and not consuming everything he produces, has contributed more to the economy by allowing the fruits of his labours to be invested, increasing future productivity. Is that so? I'm not so sure. How can we know that the spender didn't contribute more to the economy by spending 50k/year more on goods and services?
Value is created by production: someone has to make something before it can be consumed. To increase productivity, to increase the ability to produce more things, investment is needed, be it in research, infrastructure or education. If everything that is produced (the $100k worth of value) is consumed, there's nothing left to invest.
More empirically, the fact that people are willing to pay the saver interest for his saving/investment demonstrates that it must be creating some value. That interest is essentially payment to the saver for refraining from consumption.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#184Not referring to this specific exhibit but other pieces by a similar artist. Thousands of people can create this kind of paintings for cheap. That it still sells for more than what many people can make in a decade or a career means a stratospheric concentration of wealth in society or a bubble in the commercial art world. If there is real scarcity because of climate change or other widespread disaster, how much can a…
> Thousands of people can create this kind of paintings
But you didn’t.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#185This is just so impressive to me. That this was set in motion in 2006 with the engineering and frame design and executed perfectly 12 years later is just so magnificent I’m almost tearing up. The way the it was shredded and stopping halfway allows the piece to still be hung, and in my mind, this massively increases the notoriety and value of the piece. To prank Sotheby’s like this at the moment that the auctioneers g…
Here's a picture from Banksy's instagram account at the moment the picture was shredded. Just look at the reactions of the onlookers.
https://scontent-lht6-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/c01d91bf8f623d18...
Original entry on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bokt2sEhlsu/
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#186Great performance art. I've always thought about ridiculously expensive art self-destructing at point of sale, which is often auctions. I don't think art should be that inaccessible and I'm not asserting a specific threshold is but beyond a certain pricing level, art does become ridiculous. It would be interesting to see this incident repeat itself but with complete destruction - would the auctioneers argue that ashes or molten remains are still art?
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#187This is just so impressive to me. That this was set in motion in 2006 with the engineering and frame design and executed perfectly 12 years later is just so magnificent I’m almost tearing up. The way the it was shredded and stopping halfway allows the piece to still be hung, and in my mind, this massively increases the notoriety and value of the piece. To prank Sotheby’s like this at the moment that the auctioneers g…
Here's a picture from Banksy's instagram account at the moment the picture was shredded. Just look at the reactions of the onlookers. https://scontent-lht6-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/c01d91bf8f623d18... Original entry on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bokt2sEhlsu/
lol the Asian lady at the front with the big smile. Maybe she got outbid.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#188Not referring to this specific exhibit but other pieces by a similar artist. Thousands of people can create this kind of paintings for cheap. That it still sells for more than what many people can make in a decade or a career means a stratospheric concentration of wealth in society or a bubble in the commercial art world. If there is real scarcity because of climate change or other widespread disaster, how much can a…
> Not referring to this specific exhibit but other pieces by a similar artist. Thousands of people can create this kind of paintings for cheap. Art was never about difficulty of reproduction. Once an artwork has been done any hack with 2-3 years of art school can create a great imitation, and with some more talent, even do a Rembrandt or whatever. There are entire cities in China who live by making copies of famous o…
"Art was never about difficulty of reproduction."
While it's true that a skilled forger can effectively copy an old master painting, it's a pretty rare skill to have at a really high level. "Painting factory" copies from China are kitsch and definitely lack nuances that matter in the original.
But the skill of making a facsimile (a copper engraving of a painting for an edition of prints, for example) is something that used to be respected, though, to be fair, respect was pretty in proportion to how much interpretation/discretion the copier needed to bring into play. Converting colour oil painting -> black & white fine engraving is not a mechanical process, whereas turning cruder drawings into woodcuts apparently was considered merely a technical job.
What I'm getting at is the idea that the processes of reproduction are a part of the way art is made and circulated. They aren't something external that comes after the end of the creative act in a way the artist can't control. It's only in a world of immaterial digital media that it feels like art is replicated trivially and endlessly. Uniqueness seemed important when reproduction was costly (and art materials were expensive) and a lot of artworld practices, like editioning, are based on the assumption that the authentic work can't actually be copied, except by the artist. So I don't really agree with your claim.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a different kind of accounting, people behaviors may change. The wealthy art consumers want status, prestige, and acceptance as one of the ‘cool’ crowd. Or when buying for investment, they expect some will buy from them for those effects. If we make it much more prestigious and ‘cool’ for people to show off their equivalent donations to starving children, fewer will bid for the drawings and more will donate.
Definitely, but that has nothing to do with the financial system. Actually the current financial system is the only known system able to create fortunes big enough that someone is able to donate anything; and the system enables it, contrary to others that are designed only with citizens in mind. Another problem is that other systems are designed, the one we have now is more or less natural - people will always trade…
>the current financial system is the only known system able to create fortunes big enough that someone is able to donate anything
You mean the current financial system where concentrated wealth yields concentrated power to effect change?
And almost everyone is born into a situation where their wealth & power is insignificant compared to the rare individual who has been the beneficiary of the feature where rapidly or not there is a net flow concentrating resources disproportionately toward those already wealthy & powerful?
Nominally, the traditional result is that the few having most concentrated wealth are the ones capable of effecting the changes they desire, with most everyone else serving these masters in one way or another. With the servant class being highly restricted in their ability to develop personal wealth of their own, much less direct major resources toward independently progressive positive objectives.
I must assume that the current financial system is the same one as that of Genghis Khan.
So naturally there is a long precedent.
Anyway, back on topic not every single artist or engineer serves this type of master, just most of them.
Some create value or enhance wealth, some devalue or destroy, what else is new?
>We could invest in lofty ideas to alleviate starving...
This wise investment was fortunately made starting at just the most opportune time in human history, and has compounded itself remarkably in only a few generations. Many approaches are now well known, only requiring a properly-scalable "seed" committment for their relative degrees of success to be proven on the larger scale.
I guess we need to invest in lofty equitable distribution of resources, especially essential survival commodities.
Creating or spreading surplus value can require a lot of work, but those at the top of the food chain don't really have to do it if they don't feel like it since wealth is flowing their way already.
Plus there is just so much wealth & plenty already which is not having a fraction of the positive effect it could be making.
Re: An artwork by Banksy shredded itself after selling for $1.3M at Sotheby’s
#190Googling "self destructing art" yields some interesting finds, many centered around the Dada movement.