Banksy is an artist that many might be familiar with, but yet is an artist that almost no one knows anything about. For those unfamiliar, some of Banksy’s more popular pieces includes a 2006 painting Girl With Red Balloon, a popular design that some of you might have seen done as a tattoo or found as graffitti.
Now the painting was recently put up for auction where it was actually sold for around $1.4 million, but it seems that Banksy decided to either not sell it or make a statement because the moment the gavel hit the auctioneer’s podium, it seems that someone in the crowd pressed a remote control that activated a hidden shredder within the picture’s frame, destroying the painting in the process.
Auction officials were quick to remove the painting, but not before everyone’s mobile phones and cameras had been whipped out to capture the entire thing. According to a video that was uploaded by Banksy on Instagram (and has since been taken down), apparently the artist hid the shredder within the frame many years ago, so it this was quite the long game that the artist had played.
So Banksy put a video on Instagram and deleted it almost immediately about the whole shredder in the painting. I screen recorded it for anyone who missed it! pic.twitter.com/uryPvP21ge
— Zoe Smith (@zoelouisesmithx) October 6, 2018
It is unclear if the person who won the bid is expected to pay for the shredded painting (some might say that’s art), although we imagine that they probably wouldn’t. In any case you can check out the video above to see the painting get shredded, thanks to Twitter use Zoe Smith who managed to record the original video and reupload it.
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