In the street art documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, a hooded Banksy stresses the need to document graffiti. As an illegal art form, it is short-lived, painted over or stripped away quickly after it goes up. In fact, Banksy's own work has a habit of disappearing at record speed.
Yesterday, a Banksy mural on a hotel in England was covered up to protect it from vandals. Earlier this year, two Banksy murals were pulled from an auction in Miami: Slave Labour—which mysteriously appeared on the auction block after being hacked out of a wall in North London—and Wet Dog. On December 5, for the first time ever, a Banksy mural will finally be sold at auction in the US.
Julien's Auctions plans to sell Banksy's 2008 mural Flower Girl, a stencil on the wall of a Hollywood gas station in LA. The auction house believes that the mural will rake in between $150,000 and $300,000. With so much hype around Banksy these days, the sale is bound to get a lot of attention.
[via Reuters]
