Two issues seem to have dominated the news in the art world so far this month, the self-destruction at an auction at Sotheby’s of a work by Banksy immediately after it was sold for £1.04million and an exhibition in Mayfair of works where crypto-currency payments are being accepted as the method of currency for the works of art sold.
In the Banksy incident he had apparently arranged for his painting “The Girl with the Balloon”, the final auction item, to shred itself immediately following its sale by installing a shredder within the frame around the work. Nobody really knows what the intention was. It may be that it was just a prank, a gesture of contempt to the auctioneers or that Banksy thought that the incident would increase the value of the work. There is still much speculation about what happened and whether he was actually present in person at the auction to trigger the the destruction process. Here is a short account of the event as it appeared on the Independent Television news:-
https://youtu.be/BZ9PAoKvqX8
I just wonder how the winning bidder feels about the state of the work after the destruction of it!
The second news item was the decision by The House of Fine Art Gallery in Mayfair to hold an exhibition of contemporary art, running from 3rd October to 1st November, accepting payments in crypto-currency saying that they were experiencing an increase in demand from their customers who wanted to buy fine art with bitcoin “a seamless way and cost effective method to exchange value globally.” The artists on show include Stefano Bombardieri, Richard Orlinski, Hunt Slonem, Zhuang Hong Yi and Marco Grassi. The gallery is partnered in this enterprise by Uphold Inc (Adrian Steckel), a cloud based digital currency platform. The pricing is such that only wealthy people can afford the works and a pound equivalent price is also shown alongside the barcoded bitcoin figure. I must confess that I am struggling a little to understand exactly how the system works but those involved claim that this method of doing business is safe and secure although, as I understand it, the bitcoin prices are fairly volatile .
I have taken a break from painting for a while, partly because we went to the south of France for a short holiday last month. We stayed in Cannes as we have done in the past and visited the weekend market there which consists mainly of antiques such as silverware, prints, paintings, musical instruments, jewellery, sculpture, china, glassware and a wide range of other collectables. I took some photos during this outing and one of them, shown below, attracted attention when I posted it on facebook.
I was contacted by a lawyer friend I had worked with in the music industry who had spotted the icons on the left of the table in this picture (which did not show prices) and he advised me that many such icons had been looted from churches in Russia, Serbia and Cyprus and that many of them were valuable. Such stolen works were gradually being recovered and returned to their rightful owners and it was known that many had been sold by art dealers and had ended up in markets such as this! Unfortunately I did not pay really close attention to them but, on reflection and a fair amount of research, I think they could have been acquired in this way, probably were originals and not fakes. By the time I was contacted about these works it was too late to return and investigate as the market had closed!