Banksy Morons LA Edition

Showing an auctioneer conducting a sale to a room packed with bidders, Morons is based on the historical moment when Van Gogh’s Sunflowers achieved a hammer price of GBP 22.5 million at Christie’s on 30 March 1987, setting the record price for any work of art at auction. This moment marked the beginning of changes in the art market, with the emergence of mega lots achieving record prices. In the present work, the large canvas being auctioned humorously bears the words, in block capitals. Banksy mocks the crowd, representing art collectors in general, who are ready to bid huge sums of money in order to acquire artworks. Some even doing so just to speculate and resell at higher prices, transforming the art market almost like a commodity trading market. Ironically, Banksy is now one also the subject of intense bidding from art collectors willing to purchase his works for very high prices. Obviously, Banksy’s relationship with the art market is complicated and nuanced, just like his relationship with law enforcement, which is precisely why he is so successful. The artist has expressed similarly critical opinions of the art world’s commercialism through public pranks such as the famous stunt he pulled in 2008 at Sotheby’s auction of Girl with Balloon. Immediately after the hammer struck down at a record price, a shredder that Banksy built into the frame itself was triggered, causing the art to immediately begin being shredded to the shock and horror of the art world. The painting has since been renamed Love is in the Bin and has unquestionably increased substantially in value after it got partially shredded publicly. The irony never ends with Banksy. The LA Edition of Morons differs from the later version released by Pictures on Walls, principally because of the gold frame… however it also misses the green numbers in front of the auctioneer that are found on the POW version. POW only released the remaining 400 prints unsigned prints. Morons (LA Edition) is numbered /500.