ART
Banksy painting, a parody of Claude Monet famous masterpiece sold for $9.8 million following a nine-minute bidding battle at Sotheby’s. Image: Sotheby’s
An Asian art collector pays almost $10 million for Banksy painting Show me the Monet, a parody of Claude Monet famous masterpiece Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies at Sotheby’s
BY KAZAD
LONDON- Show me the Monet, a painting by the street artist Banksy has sold for £7.6 million ($9.8 million) at Sotheby’s. The painting went to the highest bidder, an Asian art collector, after nine-minute of intense bidding war with five other collectors.
Show me the Monet is Banksy’s take on a Claude Monet masterpiece Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies. The street artist reimagined Monet’s painting as a modern-day scene depicting environmental pollution. In Banksy’s parody, Monet’s beautiful scenery with a pond of water lilies and Japanese footbridge is tarnished with trash. Resting in Banksy’s beautiful pond of lilies is a traffic cone and two submerged shopping carts. What a mess!
This futuristic rendition of an old masterpiece is a reminder of the human capacity to be destructive.
Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies
Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies is one of the 12 original paintings by Monet on this subject of his famous garden. The painting features the artist’s Japanese bridge over his beautiful garden, near Giverny Northern France.
Monet began the painting around 1897, and it took him about two years to complete. It is one of the paintings by the artist on how changing lights, time, and weather affects objects. Painted at different times of the day, weather, and season, several versions include people charting and engaged in some kind of merrymaking. Suffice it to say that they did not pollute the pond of lilies. That was in the past.
Banksy’s Show me the Monet draws a sharp contrast between then and now when people gleefully disregard damage to the environment. Created in 2005, this Banksy’s oil on canvas painting was part of the Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin exhibition. The show also included other re-imagined famous works by artists including Edward Hopper, Jack Vettriano, and Vincent van Gogh.
Crude Oil, Rats, and Stinky Paintings
The Crude Oil exhibition continues to be the center of conversation 15 years later. In 2005, when Banksy was looking for a place to host the exhibition, he was rejected by many exhibition spaces. The ground for the rejections was Banksy’s determination to include 200 live rats in the show. The giant rats would scurry around the show even as people view the works on display.
Evidently, the health implications and liability implications were top on the minds of those that rejected the show. However, the London collectors Roland and Jane Cowan saw the situation differently and were willing to face the risk posed by the exhibition. Consequently, they offered Banksy the basement at 100 Westbourne Grove in West London, one of their exhibition spaces.
Art Lovers Versus Giant Rats
A lot of precautions went into preparing for the Crud Oil art exhibition. The exhibition space was lined with galvanized steel to prevent the rats from chewing through everything. In addition, the couple also had to confront the local council that did everything to close the show but failed.
The Crude Oil show was well attended and reported for the 11 days that it was on. Despite the 200 giant rats leisurely roaming the floor and the unbelievable stench that permeated the exhibition space, people throng the show. From across London and everywhere else, people came to see what the guerrilla street artist had to offer.
Long Lines of People
There were long lines of people trying to get into the show every day. To protect themselves from liability, organizers of the show ensured that guests signed a waiver absolving them of any responsibility if they were bitten by the rats and got sick. Interestingly, the waiver did not dissuade art lovers and Banksy fans who swamped the show for eleven days.
In an interview with the Channel 4 news in 2005, Banksy described the paintings in the Crude Oil exhibition thus:
“The vandalised paintings reflect life as it is now. We don’t live in a world like Constable’s Haywain anymore and, if you do, there is probably a travellers’ camp on the other side of the hill. The real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business… exactly the people who put gold-framed pictures of landscapes on their walls and try to tell the rest of us how to behave.”
According to reports, Roland and Jane Cowan bought Show Me the Monet for £15,000 after the show. Also, there were speculations that another work was given to the Cowans for hosting the exhibition.
Banksy Painting: Rats and Elephant
The Crude Oil exhibition is not the first time Banksy has used live animals to make political statements. In his first exhibition in the United States, Banksy included an Indian elephant in a show he called The Elephant in the Room. Painted red and gold, the elephant freely roamed the exhibition space. Visible as the elephant was in the space, guests to show were instructed not to talk about the giant creature. The instruction conforms with the idea of the show which was to ignore the elephant in the room.
Show me the Monet comes straight out of Banksy’s provocative oeuvre and at the most radical time of his artistic career. A controversial and decisive social commentator, Banksy uses this painting to lob a sharp criticism at our destructive way of life. He poignantly illuminates man’s total disregard for the environment and the ludicrousness of chronic capitalism.
For more than a decade, collectors have been striving to get their hands on the painting because of its increasing value. In 2018, for instance, the painting estimate was about $6 million. The price continued to increase until it finally went for almost $100 million at Sotheby’s.
Show me the Monet has a long provenance. In addition to the Crude Oils exhibition, it was also in Banksy, Greatest Hits: 2002-2008 at the Lazinc Sackville, London (2018), and Art Strikes Back: From Jorn to Banksy, at Museum Jorn Silkeborg, Denmark (2019). The painting has also appeared in exhibition catalogs and books.
Who is the Asian Art Collector?
Sotheby’s has not revealed the name of the Asian art collector that paid the £7.6 million, a price far above an estimate of £3-5 million for the Banksy.
Devolved Parliament sold for $12,200,000
Show me the Monet is the second most expensive artwork by Banksy sold at auction. In 2019, Devolved Parliament sold at auction in London for a record-breaking £9,879,500 ($12,200,000). The satirical oil painting depicts MPs in the House of Commons as chimpanzees.
Even as the price of his works soars at auction, Banksy’s identity continues to elude fans and critics.
Who is Banksy?
This is the million dollar question. As people continue their search for the real Banksy, he continues pop up everywhere with new works. One of his new works was the recent subject conservation. Do you know Banksy? Tell us.
What do you think about the value of Banksy painting Show me the Monet? Join the conversation. Share your thoughts.
