‘ART HISTORY’

Banksy Artwork That Infamously Shredded Itself Sells for New Record

After the artwork partially shredded itself upon sale in 2018, it became a new piece worth a whopping £16 million.

The infamous street artist Banksy has broken yet another ceiling in the art world. The anonymous artist’s Love is in the Bin artwork—which is the remnants of the notorious Girl with Balloon piece that shredded itself upon sale in 2018—sold at Sotheby’s in London on Thursday for a record £16 million ($22 million), far higher than its £4-6 million valuation price. As soon as Love is in the Bin was sold for £1 million to an unnamed European woman in 2018, alarms sounded and the piece spontaneously dropped through a shredder hidden in the frame. Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s contemporary art chairman, said the notorious stunt “did not so much destroy an artwork by shredding it, but instead created one” and deemed the piece the “ultimate Banksy artwork and a true icon of recent art history.”