Street artist Banksy posted a video in which he said the self-destruction of the iconic “Girl With Balloon” painting earlier this month didn’t go quite as planned.
In the video, we can see the frame being put together, as well as footage from inside Sotheby’s in London where the painting fetched $1.4 million at an auction. The 2006 work was sold for more than three times what it was estimated to sell for at Sotheby’s, after which “we heard an alarm go off,” said auction attendee Morgan Long, head of investment at the Fine Art Group. “Everyone turned around, and the picture had slipped through its frame.” It was shredded halfway through.
However, Banksy now revealed that the painting should’ve been shredded entirely, not just halfway.
“In rehearsals it worked every time,” the video said, before a clip is played that shows that the painting, indeed, was supposed to self-destruct completely.
After the auction, Banksy had shared a photo of the self-destruction on his Instagram page, along with the caption “Going, going, gone …”
At a press conference following the incident, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art in Europe, Alex Branczik, said, “We’ve been Banksy-ed.”
Watch the video above.