

Then in March 2021, Banksy’s Game Changer, 2020, sold at Christie’s in London for £16.76 million, marking an auction record for the artist that still stands. The presale estimate range for that painting was between £1.5 million and £2 million. A year later, for instance, Sotheby’s sold the artist’s Devolved Parliament, 2009, depicting monkeys in the role of British parliamentarians, for £9.9 million at a London auction. The market for Bansky’s art changed markedly after the shredding, she adds. Love is in the Bin’s current owner-who ended up with an unexpected work of art, very different from what she bid on-is bringing the painting back to auction as “she recognizes that it’s a piece of art history and now one of the most famous artworks in the world,” Baker says. “Presented in the museum context, it has to stand up to key works from the history of art-from Staatsgaleri said the painting should encourage public debate.

In Baden-Baden, Germany, between February and March 2019, and at Staatsgaleri Stuttgart in Germany, from July 2019 to February 2020. Since the shredding incident, Love is in the Bin was exhibited at Museum “We are signaling to the market that it is the most famous and iconic artwork,” says EmmaĬontemporary art specialist and head of Sotheby’s London evening sale. But it’s the highest presale estimate range for a work by Banksy sold at auction. That price appears modest given the painting’s widespread recognition, and the subsequent records achieved for the U.K. Today, Sotheby’s estimates Love is the Bin will sell for between £4 million and £6 million when it goes up for auction at an Oct. After the work self-destructed from a mechanism hidden within the painting in front of a shocked saleroom-creating history before their eyes-art market experts speculated Banksy’s prank would elevate the price of the work.
