Banksy‘s Monet tribute is going up for auction next month and is expected to fetch between £3-5 million.
The painting, which is called ‘Show Me The Monet’, was created in 2005. It’s based on Monet’s famous water lilies picture but is filled with off-key images of upside-down shopping trolleys and a traffic cone floating in the water.
Sotheby’s will sell the painting during a livestreamed auction taking place in London on October 21. It will appear for a two-day preview on Friday (September 25) before it’s unveiled in New York and Hong Kong later this month. It will then return to London where it will go on sale.
First shown 15 years ago as part of Banksy’s second gallery exhibition in London, it hails from a series collectively known as the Crude Oils, which include what Banksy has termed “remixes” of canonical artworks.
Other paintings in the Banksy series include Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers portrayed wilting or dead in their vase; Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks augmented by an angry man in Union Jack boxer shorts moments after breaking the bar window with a chair and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe re-faced with Kate Moss.
“In one of his most important paintings, Banksy has taken Monet’s iconic depiction of the Japanese bridge in the impressionist master’s famous garden at Giverny and transformed it into a modern-day fly-tipping spot,” Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s European head of contemporary art, said of the painting.
“More canal than an idyllic lily pond, Banksy litters Monet’s composition with discarded shopping trollies and a fluorescent orange traffic cone.”
He continued: “Ever prescient as a voice of protest and social dissent, here Banksy shines a light on society’s disregard for the environment in favour of the wasteful excesses of consumerism.
“Recent years have seen seminal Banksys come to auction, but this is one of his strongest, and most iconic, to appear yet. From Love is in the Bin, to the record-breaking Devolved Parliament, to this take on Monet, October just wouldn’t be complete without a big Banksy moment.”
The artwork, which shows a masked protester throwing a bouquet of flowers, initially appeared on a wall in Jerusalem in 2005.
It has since been adopted by the UK card company Full Colour Black, which has used the artwork on their products.
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