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Comment by mrleiter | Hacker News Reader

I wonder, like mentioned elsewhere in the art community, if this stunt will have the opposite assumed effect: that the artwork will be more valuable now than it was before. Since now it is a "double-Banksy" in a sense. And if others and I can think of that outcome, most definitely so can Banksy. And maybe that is the real critique of the artworld:

That even if you destroy the art, the destroyed art is still worth millions. Simply because the art has detached itself from its meaning and origin, and has tilted towards who made the art.

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If I was an art collector I would pay much more for the artwork now, for the simple reasons that

1. The girl with a balloon print was not the only one of its kind. There are other variations. It was not so unique before.

2. This is the only one, the first one, even the first (prominent?) artwork that "destroyed itself"

3. It is still an artwork. It did not destroy itself completely, but stopped in the middle of the destruction process. Doesn't it look great now, sticking only half outside the frame? Any museum of contemporary art would die for having this. And only this, not a similar one or the next one that destroys itself.

> 2. This is the only one, the first one, even the first (prominent?) artwork that "destroyed itself"

I don't know if you mean specifically Banksy work, but there's a whole discipline of auto-destructive art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-destructive_art

A well known example is the poem Agrippa by William Gibson (yes, that one) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrippa_(A_Book_of_the_Dead)

Did not know this, thanks. Maybe we can agree that Bansky's auto-destructive artwork is the one with the best publicity.

oh, for sure.

Auto-destructive art is kind of misnamed though, I think. It's generally art created through destructive acts, rather than art that destroys itself.

Is there any guarantee it won't destroy more of itself later? Does anybody know how the shredder in the frame was controlled?

Even better, if it was not a shredder, but something like a banknote printing device, the "destruction" would be reverseable.

Well, it wasn't destroyed really. Whether intentional or not, the fact that it stopped halfway trough leaves a very symbolic work.

Had it actually shredded all the way trough and spit out 38 strips it wouldn't have been such an boost for the value.

Or had it been a cross cut shredder. :)

I'm not up on my Greek prefixes, but had the shreading completed it would become a 38-ptic, and you could fill a large sized wall with it. It wouldn't be as cool as stopped half way, but the halfway through image wouldn't be in people's minds to know what they were missing, either.

The Banksy art incubator just came up with a novel strategy for maximizing exposure of a startup artwork. MAU metric through the roof before IPO. Early investors very happy.

Oh it was definitely intended to make it more valuable - after all, it didn't go all the way through. It did so very much on purpose. If the intent was to destroy the piece it would've gone through all the way, or catch on fire, or something like that.

I think the main counter argument to it being worth more now is that it was apparently already Banky's most expensive piece to have sold. A less valuable piece might expect and increase, but it's not clear that that would happen with his most expensive piece. Also worth noting that it went for multiple times the expected price at this auction, which is somewhat suspicious.

> the opposite assumed effect

What effect did whom assume this would have? This seems like a cynical yet transparent attempt by Banksy to trade off his counterculture image to boost his artworks' value.

Please, by all means, examine these:

- Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard[1]

- The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord[2]

- Hyperreality[3]

It is quite clear that Banksy is a poser. The artwork was not fully destroyed in a way that would reduce value.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality

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