Banksy’s ‘Show Me the Monet’ sold for nearly $10 million, the second-highest price ever paid for his work
Karu F. Daniels
Banksy is rocking the world of fine art.
A Monet-inspired painting by the elusive street artist has sold for nearly $10 million at auction.
The staggering sale marks the second-highest price ever paid for a piece crafted by the British spray painter. according to the Associated Press.
A member of staff poses in front of a work of art by Banksy entitled "Show Me The Monet" at Sotheby's auction house in London on Oct. 16, 2020.
A member of staff poses in front of a work of art by Banksy entitled "Show Me The Monet" at Sotheby's auction house in London on Oct. 16, 2020. (Alastair Grant/)
Titled “Show Me the Monet,” Banksy’s take on a famous impressionist painting by Claude Monet sold to an unidentified bidder at Sotheby’s in London on Wednesday night for about $9.8 million, the auction house said.
The art world outlier’s only other work to sell for more money was his piece depicting the British parliament populated by chimpanzees, selling for more than $12 million last year.
Created in 2005, “Show Me the Monet” is the popular artist’s commentary on environmental pollution. He added abandoned shopping carts and an orange traffic cone to Monet’s famous rendering of a Japanese-style footbridge and water lilies in his garden at Giverny.
A boy waves to the crew of the Astral rescue vessel from the deck of the Louise Michel rescue vessel, a French patrol boat currently manned by activists and funded by Banksy, in the Central Mediterranean Sea, at 50 miles south from Lampedusa on Aug. 28, 2020. A Berlin-based group says it has begun migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea with a bright pink former navy vessel sponsored by British artist Banksy. The group operating the MV Louise Michel, named after a 19th century French feminist and anarchist, said that it rescued 89 people from an inflatable boat in distress.
The Louise Michel rescue vessel is seen in the Central Mediterranean Sea on Aug. 28, 2020.
This undated photo issued on Tuesday July 14, 2020, shows Banksy's latest work sprayed on the inside of a London Underground tube carriage. Enigmatic graffiti artist Banksy uploaded a video to social media on Tuesday of what appeared to be him in disguise as a professional cleaner spray painting images of rats on the inside of a London Underground train along with messages about spreading the new coronavirus.
Banksy showed his appreciation for healthcare workers in the UK in a new photo donated to University Hospital Southampton (UHS) in England on May 6, 2020. The artist created a piece titled “Game Changer”, depicting a boy playing with superhero toys, among them a nurse with a cape, and sent it to UHS with the note "Thanks for all you're doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if its only black and white." UHS retitled the artwork "Painting for Saints," with Banksy’s permission.
The newest piece of Banksy artwork has been revealed. The anonymous artist took to Twitter on Feb. 13, 2020 to showcase his latest artwork on the side of building in Bristol, England: a small girl with a slingshot shooting into the air, resulting in an explosion of flowers. Passerby on February 14 wasted no time snapping photos of the buzzed about piece.
Banksy's new piece can be spotted in the Barton Hill area of Bristol.
Red noses have appeared on Banksy's Birmingham homeless reindeer mural, which has also been fenced off to protect the artwork, on a railway bridge wall in Vyse St. on Dec. 10, 2019, in Birmingham, England. The elusive British artist unveiled the artwork in a video posted to his social media accounts on Monday, Dec. 9, and has been dubbed "God Bless Birmingham" by locals. The video shows a man he calls Ryan settling down to sleep on a bench, which appears to be "pulled" by two reindeer painted on a brick wall.
The alleged artistic work of the American street artist Banksy, just called "The shipwrecked child," appeared on the outer wall of a house overlooking the Rio CA Foscari during the 58th International Art Biennale on May 15, 2019 in Venice, Italy.
A new Banksy stencil is seen on the streets of France amidst the "yellow vest" protests on Feb. 18, 2019.
Just as quick as Banksy unveiled his latest artwork “Seasons Greetings” on a garage wall in the Taibach area of Port Talbot in South Wales, it was made unavailable to the public in some way. The piece, which sprung up on Dec. 18, 2018, was discovered to be blocked off by a large Plexiglass screen and surrounded by fences on December 23. The move was made after a drunken man attempted to destroy it, prompting the local police to put up the protective screens.
Infamous street artist Banksy didn’t seem to like the idea that a work of his was being sold for such a high price, so he took matters into his own hands. Banksy’s “Girl with Balloon” "self-destructed” at Sotheby’s, an art broker headquarters in London, on Oct. 5, 2018 after being auctioned for 1.04 million pounds, or $1.4 million. Banksy posted a photo of stunned attendees watching as the artwork was shredded within the frame moments after being sold, with the caption “Going, going, gone…”
A man walks past a Banksy mural of a girl spray-painting over a swastika on a wall in Paris, France on June 24, 2018. The infamous street artist took to the streets of Paris last week with a new series of illustrations focusing on the country’s response to refugees coming over, and officially confirmed the works were his on Instagram on June 26, 2018.
Another Banksy piece featured a covered rider in the likeness of Napoleon Bonaparte riding a horse, seen here on June 25, 2018.
A man takes a photograph of a Banksy piece in Paris on June 25, 2018, on a side street to the Bataclan concert hall where a terrorist attack killed 90 people in 2015.
Banksy painted an illustration of a man with a saw and a dog with a stump arm on the wall of Sorbonne University on June 24, 2018.
A Banksy illustration of a rat with a hair bow in the likeness of Minnie Mouse is seen in Paris on June 25, 2018.
Street artist Banksy struck New York twice in one day with his famed street art, with his latest work showcased along a wall on Houston Street in Manhattan on Mar. 15, 2018 and seen here the following day. The mural draws attention to the jailed Turkish artist Zehra Dogan, who is currently serving out a nearly three year prison sentence for a painting of the war-torn Turkish town Nusaybin. Her painting was considered terrorist propaganda.
While Dogan's painting originally sat above Banksy's work, seen here on March 15, it has since been taken down.
Famed street artist Banksy strikes again. The anonymous British graffiti artist debuted a running rat on the inner circumference of a clock above a closed former bank building on 14th Street in Manhattan on March 15, 2018.
English graffiti artist Banksy is at it again! This time, instead of taking to city streets, Banksy is displaying some of his newest art in his biggest show to date. The show, entitled "Dismaland" will be open to the public starting Aug. 21 but here's a sneak peek inside the new exhibition.
This sculpture shows a woman being attacked by seagulls while sitting on a beach as part of Banky's "Dismaland" exhibit that will open on Aug. 21, 2015. The show is a take of Disneyland and takes place at an abandoned U.K. beach attraction.
Cinderella's in trouble! This amusing piece by Banksy shows what appears to be Cinderella in an overturned carriage while a bunch of paparazzi take photos of her. This sculpture is just one of many to appear in Banky's largest show to date entitled "Dismaland."
A bellboy stands outside street artist Banksy's newly opened Walled Off hotel in the Israeli occupied West Bank town of Bethlehem, on March 3, 2017. Secretive British street artist Banksy opened a hotel next to Israels controversial separation wall in Bethlehem on Friday, his latest artwork in the Palestinian territories.
A Banksy wall painting showing Israeli border policeman and Palestinian in a pillow fight is seen in one of the rooms of the "The Walled Off Hotel" in the West Bank city of Bethlehem March 3, 2017.
A balcony from Banksy's newly opened Walled Off hotel looks out onto Israel's controversial separation wall in Bethlehem.
A woman sits in in the Walled Off hotel which was opened by street artist Banksy, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on March 3, 2017.
A wall decorated with models of drones and a painting of Jesus with a sniper's dot on his forehead is seen in the "The Walled Off Hotel" in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on March 3, 2017.
A piece that appeared on Manhattan's upper West Side on Oct. 20 uses a stencil to convert a fire alarm into a high striker game. Here, a man "strikes" a funny pose with the work.
Banksy painted this message on a wall in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood after The New York Times rejected his op/ed about the new One World Trade Center building.
"Twin Towers in Tribeca" went up on Oct. 15 in the downtown neighborhood of Tribeca, not far from the World Trade Center site. The piece consists of a stenciled outline of the New York skyline with the World Trade Center and an orange chrysanthemum exploding from one building.
Off the wall! Banksy's art transcends surfaces at this Lower East Side lot, covering an abandoned trailer and car. The work is thought to be a commentary on the war in Iraq.
“The vandalized paintings reflect life as it is now,” Banksy, whose identity has never been officially revealed, said in 2005, according to Sotheby’s. “The real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business... exactly the people who put gold-framed pictures of landscapes on their walls and try to tell the rest of us how to behave.”
The famous auction house said that the purchase of the oil on canvas painting came after a “lively and competitive 9-minute bidding battle between clients from around the world.”
