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This picture just sold for 11 million Swiss francs, guess whose it is?
An ironic reinterpretation of a Monet painting by British artist Banksy has been auctioned for 7.6 million pounds (9 million Swiss francs).
The oil painting titled “Show Me the Monet” had previously been estimated to be worth between 3 and 5 million pounds, as auction house Sotheby’s announced on Wednesday.
It is the second highest auction price ever achieved for a work by the artist. A year ago, Banksy’s oil painting, showing the British Parliament populated by monkeys, paid a record £ 9.9 million. That equates to around 11.7 million Swiss francs.
Banksy painted “Show Me the Monet” in 2005. It was shown as part of a collection titled “The Crude Oils” in his second gallery show. The painting takes up Claude Monet’s impressionist masterpiece “The Japanese Bridge” and transforms the idyll of the Giverny garden into a modern illegal garbage dump. A shopping cart and an orange traffic cone move up and down in Monet’s water lily pond.
“Banksy, always forward-looking as the voice of protest and social contradiction, highlights society’s disregard for the environment in favor of wasteful excesses of consumption,” said Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s contemporary art director at Europe.
Banksy has become world famous as a graffiti artist, but his identity is known only to a handful of confidants. His works often have political messages. (jaw / sda / afp)
