Latest News
All the most recent news about Banksy
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1. AUCTION NEWS
Banksy Originals
If 2020 was the year for Banksy prints at auction, 2021 is the year for Banksy originals. Indeed, Banksy is breaking all the records and more Banksy originals sold at auction so far in 2021 than in any previous year.
As of 25 June 2021, 24 Banksy originals sold at auction for a total of GBP 48,331,282 (USD 67,448,758).
It is the highest ever achieved by Banksy so far…
Game Changer (2020) sold at Christie’s London on 23 March 2021 for GBP 16,758,000 (USD 23,210,000), the highest price ever paid at auction for a Banksy original. All funds will benefit a charity.
The Second highest price achieved so far in 2021 was for Love Is In the Air (2005), a version on canvas of Banksy’s iconic visual that sold at Sotheby’s New-York on 12 May 2021 for USD 12,903,000.
See All The Auction Results for Banksy Originals in 2021
Love Is In the Air, 2005
Banksy Prints
The market for Banksy Prints seems to be softening a bit. It seems reasonable after such a strong increase in prices all over the board. The last auction of H1 2021 is Bonhams, which introduced its first online Banksy print auction, that ended on 29 June 2021.
Following is the Banksy prints auction report for H1 2021.
See All Auction Results for Banksy Prints during Q2 2021
The first print to be auctioned for Q3 of 2021 is none other than an Artist’s Proof of Nola, to be auctioned at Christie’s in London on 2 July 2021. The last time a Multi-Color Rain AP from Nola appeared at auction was on 18 December 2017 at Bonhams where it sold for GBP 75,000.
Nola (Green To Blue Rain AP), 2008
Signed in pencil, lower right
Numbered AP/26 in pencil, lower right
From the edition of 66 Artist’s Proofs
Christie’s London, 2 July 2021
Banksy (b. 1974) (christies.com)
2. BANKSY NEWS
Not much news on the Banksy front… The artist went silent after his last mural…
Another Trademark Set-Back for Banksy
Source: Artnet
The European Union’s intellectual property office just reinforced last month’s invalidation of a trademark owned by the British street artist Banksy.
The latest rulings issued from the office’s “cancellation department” this morning relate to two of the anonymous artist’s most famous images, Radar Rat and Girl with an Umbrella. The judgment was made in favor of Full Colour Black, a U.K. greeting card company which recreates Banksy’s works for sale. The news was first reported by The Telegraph.
The E.U. panel had previously canceled the artist’s trademarks for his Laugh Now But One Day We’ll Be In Charge, an image depicting a monkey (or monkeys) wearing a sandwich-style advertising board. Cancellation of the trademark for a fourth Banksy image, depicting a girl hugging a torpedo, known as Bomb Hugger was issued just a few days ago. Banksy can now no longer claim legal rights to his imagery, according to the report. Pest Control, the authentication vehicle that Banksy established in 2008, did not respond to a request for comment.
From www.fullcolorblack.com
“We are naturally delighted that the E.U. trademark office has confirmed our belief that Banksy acted in bad faith in registering those works as trademarks,” Aaron Wood, the attorney for Full Colour Black, told Artnet News in an email. “We had strong reason to believe that it was done to avoid having to bring cases under copyright law and to enable him to get registrations in the U.S. His case was undone by his public statements and those of his lawyer, Mark Stephens, who seemed to take delight in publicly professing how clever they were in opening the Croyden pop-up to subvert trade mark law.” Stephens did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The E.U. intellectual property office decided that Banksy’s anonymity means he cannot secure copyright for his art. Also working against him is his previous public proclamation that “copyright is for losers.” On its website, Pest Control states: “Saying ‘Banksy wrote “copyright is for losers” in his book’ doesn’t give you free rein to misrepresent the artist and commit fraud. We checked.”
The panel found that there was no evidence that Banksy was actually producing, selling, or providing any goods or services when he successfully applied for the E.U. trademark in 2018. As a result, they concluded that the artist is acting in “bad faith” as he is “only pretending to want to trade in his creations.”
In 2019, Banksy organized a shop in Croyden, “Gross Domestic Product”, that was not actually physically open but sold goods online. At the time, Banksy said that the impetus for the store was the trademark dispute with the greeting card company. Everything in the store was “created specifically to fulfill a particular trademark category under E.U. law”, Banksy said. “I had the legal sheet pinned up in the studio like a muse.”
“To protect the right under copyright law would require him to lose his anonymity, which would undermine his persona,” reads the ruling. “It is clear that when the proprietor filed [for the trademark] he did not intend to use [it] and actual use was only made… after the initiation of the previous proceedings.”
3. BANKSY EXPLAINED NEWS
Banksy Explained Version 2 has been released on 25 June 2021. It comes with a brand new design, and presentation. More importantly, it contains a lot more information than version 1.
However, a few sections are not completed yet, and some new features have not been activated either. Forgive our appearance during construction time, the content will evolve every day as we are working on numerous sections at the same time.
