15. • Untitled, 1982
• by the late artist Jean-
Michel Basquiat has sold
at auction in New York for
$110.5m (£85.4m).
• That is nearly double the
price of his previous most
expensive work, bought by
the same person a year
ago.
• It has broken several other
records including becoming
the most expensive work by
any US artist.
• It is also the highest price
fetched for any art by a
black artist and the first
piece created since 1980 to
break the $100m mark.
18. Many of Banksy’s rat artworks were influenced by pioneering French graffiti artist Xavier Prou, better known
as Blek le Rat, who is considered to be the ‘Father of Stencil Graffiti’ and whose rats has appeared around
Paris since the 1980s. Banksy has acknowledged Prou as an inspiration, saying “Every time I think I’ve painted
something slightly original, I find out that Blek le Rat has done it as well, only 20 years earlier.”
In return, Prou has said of Banksy: “People say he copies me, but I don’t think so… I feel what he is doing in
London is similar to the rock movement in the Sixties.”
21. • Sold by Sotheby’s London, Love is in
the Bin is the partly shredded version
of Girl with Balloon painting. It is
Banksy’s most expensive physical
artwork sold at an auction.
• When Girl with Balloon sold for USD
1.4 million in October 2018, a
shredder hidden in the frame was
switched on immediately after the
gavel fell, and half the painting went
through the shredder. This incident
made headlines across the globe and
shocked the art world.
• The owner of the shredded painting
sold the work — renamed Love is in
the Bin — for GBP 16 million (approx
USD 25.4 million) at Sotheby’s
Contemporary Art Sale on 14 October
2021. The lot was expected to sell for
an amount between GBP 4 million to
GBP 6 million (approx USD 5.5 million
and 8.3 million).
• Adding the buyer’s premium, the price
came to GBP 18,582,000 (approx
USD 29.5 million). The auction price
of Love is in the Bin is thus the
highest paid for a Banksy artwork.
