Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 916 Banksy

The Banksy Liang En mentioned was a British graffiti artist born in Bristol, England in 1974.His work is inspired by the real life conditions of Bristol's underprivileged artists and musicians.

That is to say, these works are themed with satirical criticism, involving all aspects of life, such as politics, culture, morality, etc., which are the most common situations in daily life.

In terms of artistic style, his street graffiti, combined with graffiti in life, coupled with unique stencil printing technology, gradually formed his own style.

From 1992 to 1994, Banksy started his artistic career in his hometown of Bristol, becoming a freehand graffiti artist.

It was around this time that he used stencils to create art, while conveying messages through commonly used motifs, including images of mice, apes, policemen, soldiers, children, and old people, for example.

This creation continued for many years.It wasn't until 2002 that his creations were exhibited for the first time, and it wasn't until then that he really became famous.

Banksy's art auction record was set in 25 when famous American pop singer Christine Aguilera bought the original painting of "gay" Queen Victoria, along with two other Banksy paintings, for £000 A new high was reached on October 2006:
It was a set of six silk-spun portraits of supermodel Ji Moss, similar in style to Andy Warhol's portrait of Marilyn Monroe;

It sold for £50 at a Sotheby's auction in London, more than five times its reserve price.

Then at the same auction, Banksy's transposition of "Monro Lisa" in green and red was bid for another 57 pounds.

In December, Max Foster, a columnist for CNN International in London, began dubbing the whirlwind the "Banksy Effect" to describe the previously obscure street crowd behind his personal success. Artists have finally gradually attracted the attention of the society.

The most famous one was sold in 2018. A famous work "Girl Holding a Balloon" by Banksy, a mysterious figure in the British graffiti industry, was sold for 104 million pounds at Sotheby's London auction house.

The price itself was already surprising, but what was even more surprising happened after the hammer was dropped. I saw that the painting on the scene actually slipped from the frame automatically and was cut into thin strips by the built-in paper cutting device.

It's just that the paper was jammed due to the problem of machine design, so in the end only half of the pattern was smashed, while the other half remained in the frame.

The incident became a sensation, and Girl with Balloon became the first work of art to be "created" at auction as the artist admitted to his vandalism.

What's more exaggerated is that this is just the beginning, as the painting, which was renamed "Love in the Trash Can", became more famous after repeated publicity.

On October 2021, 10, this painting will be put up for auction again.It was hammered at a sky-high price of 14 million pounds in London, which not only broke the auction price record for Banksy's works, but also far exceeded the pre-event estimate.

The core reason why this artist is so famous is that his works have a certain uniqueness. Those works are inspired by the real life conditions of Bristol's low-level artists and musicians, and they are all based on satirical criticism.

The content of the works involves all aspects of life, such as politics, culture, and morality.His street graffiti, combined with graffiti in daily life, coupled with unique stencil printing technology, gradually formed his own style.

More importantly, Banksy is a mysterious artist. He has always remained anonymous and never sold photos of his street graffiti works, nor put his works on display cabinets in commercial galleries.

For this reason, art auctioneers tried to obtain the location of his graffiti works, and even left a lot of demolition problems for the winning bidder.

But Banksy, on the other hand, has not been shy when it comes to self-promotion.Although his creation does not respect the copyright, he is represented by an art agent.Although his creative process has always been kept secret, he has published several books to explain his creative ideas.

So from a certain point of view, he should be a person with a high artistic level but who knows how to manage himself. Of course, this is much better than those guys who just rely on hype but have a bag of shit in their stomachs.

"No—" After hearing Liang En's question, the middle-aged man quickly denied it subconsciously, but at this time he also looked at Liang En who had taken off his mask by the light of the street lamp and recognized his face identity.

"Wait, I seem to know you. Are you the author of the famous sunflower in the exhibition at the Grand Palace? I saw your photo at the booth before." He took out his phone and released the photo.

Because this painting is a new oil painting painted with modern dyes, Liang En did not forbid everyone to use flash when taking pictures.

More importantly, he released most of the copyrights of these oil paintings, as long as they are not used in the commercial field, it is enough, and this also greatly speeds up the spread.

So in just one day, the high-definition picture of this oil painting spread everywhere and caused a sensation in the art circle. Artists like Banksy naturally got such a picture.

Although Banksy prefers to paint some spoof oil paintings in terms of oil paintings, even in 2005, he also created a spoof of Van Gogh's painting "Sunflowers at the Gas Station".This painting is the third most expensive work in Banksy's auction record. Christie's New York sold it for more than 1 million US dollars, which also reflects the quality of this work from a certain angle.

Different from Van Gogh's sunflowers, this picture shows the stage of sunflowers withering and falling apart. The sunflowers, which originally symbolized vitality, became dying and their petals scattered all over the ground.

According to some art critics, the artist humorously satirizes the pollution of art and nature by consumerism through the withered gas station flowers, and criticizes the society's indifference.

But in any case, those who can draw such a picture must have a deep study of Van Gogh's original sunflowers, at least they should have studied the authentic oil painting for a week or two, and then read a lot of information.

So after seeing the pair of sunflowers painted by Liang En, he immediately realized how good the oil painting of sunflowers was, so he was naturally impressed.

"Ah, what Mary did is a bit exaggerated." Liang En muttered in a low voice when he heard the photo of himself placed on the booth, and then nodded to admit it.

"Yes, those oil paintings were all painted by me, including the sunflower oil painting that you mentioned, and I also publicly showed my painting method in the salon before, if you are interested, you should be able to see the content of someone taking pictures .”

"Ah, are you really Mr. Leung? I'm Banksy, and your oil painting is so good, I believe if you didn't use modern dyes and then make the oil painting a little bit old, I would You might even really think it’s an authentic painting by Van Gogh.”

After Liang En admitted his identity, the middle-aged artist on the opposite side suddenly became excited. As a real artist, he knew how powerful Liang En's works of art were, so he also admitted his identity.

(End of this chapter)