Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Everyone wants their art to go up in value, but even a multi-platinum pop-punk star can find there is such a thing as too much appreciation. News comes this week that the Blink-182 co-founder and vocalist Mark Hoppus is selling Banksy’s “Crude Oil (Vettriano)”, after a recent revaluation estimated it at up to £5mn — far above its original 2005 price of £15,000 and the likely £250,000 paid by Hoppus six years later. Such leaps are a tribute to Banksy’s power as the ultimate outsider-insider artist: an anonymous showman, cleverly balancing anti-establishment rebelliousness within the very established and moneyed confines of the art market.For the hand-painted “Crude Oil (Vettriano)”, the British street artist hijacks Jack Vettriano’s familiar “The Singing Butler” (1992), in which a couple in black tie dance on a rainy beach while a butler and maid hold up umbrellas. Banksy’s additions turn the sentimental scene into a piece about the environmental crisis: two hazmat-suited men grapple with a barrel of toxic waste as an oil tanker sinks in the distance.Hoppus, who bought the Banksy when such works were selling for between £200,000 and £300,000, says that he and his wife, Skye, “were honestly shocked at the [latest] estimate”. The painting had hung in their family homes in London and then Los Angeles and “borne witness to soccer balls being kicked far too close, and half-drunk friends leaning an eye’s length away with a glass full of wine asking suspiciously if this is really a Banksy and, if so, can they touch it. Jesus,” he says.Consequently, “we started becoming more protective of its wellbeing . . . like ‘hey man, why don’t you take that cigar outside’,” Hoppus says. They decided to get it professionally stored “in a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style warehouse in some inconspicuous secure facility in the greater Los Angeles area,” Hoppus says, with undisguised disgust. Now, he says, they are “setting it free from its wooden crate”, and an unspecified portion of the funds has been earmarked for medical charities in LA as well as the California Fire Foundation.Banksy has won over other celebrity owners such as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Robbie Williams. The artist also appeals to the crypto crowd, likely as a reflection of their own anti-establishment mantra. “Banksy has carefully negotiated the worlds of being underground and mainstream at the same time,” says Oliver Barker, Sotheby’s chair of Europe, who will auction the work in London on March 4. Anonymity is key to Banksy’s mystique. It keeps his story alive in people’s imaginations and helps the artist’s all-important shock value. Yet Banksy is still part of a visible art history tradition, Barker says, noting that the graffiti artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat also “came off the street and into the gallery”. Today’s street artists include French superstar JR, whose work will launch Perrotin’s new space in London next month.Money does muddy the waters, though. Steve Lazarides, Banksy’s former manager and gallerist, says: “None of us even knew you could make money out of this, we believed in the movement. The artists had something to say and took it to the street, where it was supposed to be, for millions of people.” At the same time, he says, “making them [the artists] keep it real just means that the only people who can make money are the sons and daughters of billionaires”. He notes that artists such as Banksy earn only a cut of a work’s original price (generally 50 per cent) rather than making gains from secondary-market sales, as happen at auction.And while Hoppus’s painting might have shot up in value, Banksy’s market is in fact past its peak. This came between 2019 and 2021, thanks to the infamous shredding incident. A reminder: at an October 2018 Sotheby’s auction, the artist managed to smuggle a shredding device into the painting “Girl with Balloon” (2006) — an image of a silhouetted child reaching for a heart-shaped balloon that was once voted the UK’s favourite artwork.It isn’t known if the intention was to destroy the work completely, but conveniently — for the art trade at least — the device stopped halfway through and its winning bidder agreed to keep the partially torn work, renamed “Love is in the Bin”, and bought for £1mn. The accompanying publicity helped boost Banksy’s market, which ArtTactic finds topped in 2021 when the same painting came back to Sotheby’s and sold for the artist’s record of £18.6mn.Such multi-million-pound sales for original paintings make up the bulk in value of Banksy’s secondary-market sales, which by volume are dominated by his lower-priced editioned prints. This area is problematic though — Banksy’s simple imagery and guerrilla activity has invited many forgeries, of both his commercial works and street pieces. Most auction houses now won’t accept any works removed from walls, however carefully, and defer to Banksy’s management and authentication company, Pest Control, which issues certificates and has a “Keeping It Real” service that refunds owners its fee if a work is found to be a fake. “There are a lot of people trying to sell fake Banksy’s who go to great lengths to make them seem real. If it seems too good to be true — it probably is,” Pest Control warns. Banksy’s Instagram account, which has more than 13mn followers, is the go-to for confirming authorship of his street art.Not everyone is a fan. The gimmicks can wear thin while his artistic skills are hardly revolutionary. At the same time, and helping to keep his prices high, is the fact that while Banksy has not disappeared, he seems to have stopped making new work for the commercial market. “There is pretty much nothing available,” Barker confirms, which adds to the demand when such works appear. Banksy also has not lost the power to surprise — witness his inflatable migrant raft that launched at last year’s Glastonbury Festival and the nine artworks of animals that appeared daily on London’s walls soon after. Can we expect another shredding incident at the March 4 auction? “I hope not,” Barker says, having presided over the 2018 stunt. “The one thing we know about Banksy is that he never returns to the scene of the crime.”Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning
