bansky // canavarlar

street art

A Record price for Banksy bomb art

picture of pensioners bowling with bombs by graffiti artist Banksy has sold
in London for £102,000, breaking a record for his work.
Bombing Middle England, which is made from acrylic and spray-paint on
canvas, reached double its highest estimated price of £50,000 at
Sotheby's.

The artist's Balloon Girl also sold for £37,200, while another piece called
Bomb Hugger fetched £31,200.

But a rare signed artwork, Precision Bomber, failed to sell.

'Sensational result'

The previous highest price paid for one of the artist's distinctive spray
paintings was £62,400 in October 2006, when the image of a couple
embracing clad in deep sea diving gear - which was used for the cover of
Blur's Think Tank album - went for 10 times its estimated value at
Bonhams.

"It's a sensational result," said Elli Varnavides, head of the impressionist,
modern and contemporary art department at Sotheby's Olympia
branch. "It's a record for any Banksy sold at international auction."

Another sale at Sotheby's New Bond Street auction house raised £45.7m
on Wednesday evening.

Sotheby's said the total was a record for a contemporary art sale in
Europe.

The highest priced lot was White Canoe by British artist Peter Doig, which
was bought by an anonymous bidder for £5.7m, a record for the artist.

Other sales included Gerard Richter's Abstraktes Bild which went for £2.8m
and Roy Lichtenstein's Still Life with Oysters, Fish in a Bowl and Book,
which fetched £2.7m.

Mystery man

Banksy, whose true identity has never officially been revealed, became
famous for creating politicised stencils on the walls of public buildings.

His high-profile stunts have included painting "I want out" inside the
elephant enclosure of London Zoo and a painting of a ladder on the
partition wall in Israel's West Bank.

Last year, he doctored copies of Paris Hilton's album to show the singer
topless with a dog's head, and placed a life-sized replica of a Guantanamo
Bay detainee inside the Disneyland theme park in California.

A gang of thieves tried to capitalise on his success last month by
attempting to steal the door of a derelict building in Liverpool which
featured one of his paintings.

One art expert said the price showed Banksy was becoming more of a
household name.

"Our figures show that prices for contemporary art have risen by 12% in
the last year alone," said Charles Dupplin of insurance firm Hiscox.

"It's no surprise that pieces of art like this are fetching bigger sums."

Three more Banksy paintings go on sale in Sotheby's on Thursday in one of
the biggest weeks for art auctions the UK has ever seen.

On Monday, sales at Sotheby's Impressionist & Modern Art sale in central
London made almost £95m, a new European record.