If you ever want to see what sheer panic looks like in a room full of billionaires, look up the footage from Sotheby’s on the night of October 5, 2018.
The high-society crowd was packed into the London auction room for the Contemporary Art Evening Sale. The final lot of the night was a rare framed canvas art version of Banksy’s iconic 2006 spray-paint artwork, Girl with Balloon. Bids shot up fast, bouncing back and forth across the telephone lines until the final hammer struck at £1,042,000, roughly $1.4 million.
The crowd applauded, holding up their champagne glasses. And that was the exact second everything went wild.
An Alarm, a Remote Control, and a Hidden Shredder
Right after the gavel hit the desk, an electronic siren started beeping inside the gallery. Heads turned toward the wall. Suddenly, the canvas began sliding downward through the bottom of its heavy, Victorian-style gilt frame.
As it descended, razor-sharp blades hidden inside the frame sliced the artwork into neat vertical ribbons right before everyone’s eyes. Gallery staff scrambled toward the wall in complete shock while phone bidders froze mid-sentence. (For lovers of bold pop art prints and modern street art decor, it was the ultimate live stunt.)
Banksy had secretly built a remote-controlled mechanical shredder into the frame years earlier, waiting for the moment the painting would eventually hit a high-end commercial auction. As Sotheby's senior director Alex Branczik famously admitted to reporters right after the sale: "It appears we just got Banksy-ed."
The Glitch That Multiplied Its Value by 18
Here is the funniest twist of the whole story. Banksy later posted a video showing rehearsal footage, revealing he intended to shred the canvas completely. But during the live event, the battery-powered mechanism jammed halfway through, leaving the top half of the girl intact while the bottom hung in shredded strips.
Instead of pulling out of the deal, the European female buyer who won the £1.04 million bid decided to complete the transaction. Banksy’s authentication body, Pest Control, officially renamed the half-shredded work Love is in the Bin, recognizing it as the first piece of art ever created live during an auction.
Fast forward three years to October 2021. The owner brought Love is in the Bin back to Sotheby’s for auction. When the hammer fell, it sold for a staggering £18,582,000 ($25.4 million), setting a towering record for Banksy. In trying to destroy his work to mock the art market's absurdity, he inadvertently multiplied its value by eighteen.
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