Banksy’s ‘Love is in the Bin’ Sells for £18.6m, Triple Sotheby’s High Estimate

Banksy b. 1974, United Kingdom Follow +

Three years ago, Banksy‘s Love is in the Bin (2018) jammed while shredding itself immediately after fetching £1m (US $1.4m) at a Sotheby’s auction in London.

The same work, still suspended in the frame that sliced half of it to shreds, sold at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction last night for £18.6m (US $25.4m). That’s the highest price paid for a Banksy so far, well above the auction house’s pre-sale estimate of £4–6m.

Sotheby’s said 1.2 million viewers tuned in to watch the auction across their platforms.

Ten bidders, some of whom were completely new to Sotheby’s, competed for the work before the hammer fell to Nick Buckley Wood, Director of Private Sales, Sotheby’s Asia, who was bidding on behalf of a private collector in Asia.

The first time the work went to auction, Banksy posted an image of the half-shredded work with the caption ‘Going, going, gone...’. In a subsequent post, he wrote, ‘Some people think the auction house were in on it, they weren’t.’

This time, Sotheby’s knew exactly what they had.

‘Banksy’s Love is in the Bin is the most instantly recognisable work of the 21^st century,’ said Alex Branczik, Chairman of Modern & Contemporary Art, Sotheby’s Asia. ‘And tonight, it was made available for sale for the very first time. Moments like that don’t happen often, but when they do—as tonight—the collecting community, and the world at large, come out for it.’

All told, the London Contemporary Art Evening Auction fetched £65.9 million (US $90.1 million). A large portion of that came from a trio of paintings by Gerhard Richter that together raised £23.5m (US $32.1m), a figure broadly in line with Sotheby’s high estimate for the works.

Another work by Jadé Fadojutimi made a mockery of pre-sale estimates, with her The Barefooted Scurry Home (2017) selling for £825,700 (US $1.1m) over an estimate of £180,000–250,000.

Ewa Juszkiewicz‘s Maria (After Johannes Cornelisz Verspronk) (2013) sold for £352,800 (US $481,942), ten times its pre-sale estimate and more than triple Juszkiewicz’s previous auction record.

Other artists who set record prices at auction last night include Etel Adnan and Flora Yukhnovich. —[O]

Main image: Banksy, Love is in the Bin (2018). Spray paint and acrylic on canvas mounted on board, framed by the artist. Decommissioned, remote controlled shredding mechanism remains in the frame. 142 by 78 by 18 cm. Courtesy Sotheby's.