On day 13 of Banksy’s residency in New-York, Better Out Than In, the artist set up a stall in Central Park where an unassuming trader sold his paintings to passing tourists. Film footage shows Banksy’s immediately recognizable black and white stenciled canvases stacked on a trestle table or suspended on the stall’s makeshift metal framework. Variations of Heavy Weaponry, Laugh Now and Love Is In the Air jostled for space with new works including one with a discount store label stencil announcing the price of each work as $60. The following day the event was documented on the artist’s website:

Kids on Guns, 2013

Stencil spray paint on canvas
45.5 x 45.5 cm (17 15/16 x 17 15/16 inches)

Signed and numbered CP/15 on the overlap

Bonhams London, 2 July 2014

GBP 68,500 / USD 96,920

The first paintings weren’t sold until 3.30pm when a lady acquired two for her children after first negotiating a 50% discount. The footage shows them being placed without protection in a blue plastic carrier bag. Kids on Guns and Winnie The Pooh,  were purchased together half an hour later by the present owner, a New Zealander, and the transaction was also captured on film. A further four works had sold by the end of the day generating the total sum of $420 for the artist. For the casual observer it must have been difficult to believe that the works were in fact genuine. The ubiquitous nature of the trader and stand, located in one of New York’s tourist hotspots, and the overall display of the works was a master stroke: a setting and presentation at odds with the hallowed white cube space of a gallery environment designed to lend artworks gravitas and, by association, added value. The fact that his paintings were original and were being offered at a tiny fraction of their true retail value raises real questions about the perception of worth and the nature of art as commodity within the marketplace, something that the artist must be acutely aware of. Banksy, the maverick artist embraced by the very same establishment he sets out to ridicule.

 

Banksy’s website was careful to add “Please note: This was a one off. The stall will not be there again today.” in order to avoid the dangerous sales scrum that would have resulted from the changed perception of these very same works. The whole exercise represents Banksy at his very best: the expression of a powerful statement executed in an ingenious manner with a knowing sense of humor, but also one that reveals a very human side to an anonymous artist struggling to come to terms with his runaway commercial success.

Kids on Guns, 2003