Culture

Banksy Suggests Partial Shredding Stunt at Sotheby’s Was a Malfunction

WHOOPS

The artist posted a “rehearsal” video that showed the painting being shredded completely.

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Tristan Fewings/Getty

Banksy suggested in a video posted Wednesday that his partial shredding stunt at Sotheby’s earlier this month was a malfunction, saying the shredder was meant to go through the entire painting. At the very end of the video, the artist wrote that the shredder built into the frame “worked every time” in rehearsals, then showed a clip of the frame shredding a whole painting. The video also showed the shredder’s construction process and the moment the piece was shredded at the art auction. A man dressed in black is seen pushing a remote control button, which presumably activated the shredder right when the painting was sold. In an Instagram post, the artist addressed the speculation behind his stunt. “Some people think it didn’t really shred. It did,” he wrote in post caption. “Some people think the auction house were in on it, they weren’t.” The Associated Press reports the partially shredded painting was sold to a European collector for $1.4 million.

Read it at Associated Press