[Daniel Silk]

Just thinkin it will be a good idea to start a thread of on this subject right now, so we can try to keep all the chat about this on one thread Thanks ;D

www.Bonhams.com

Sale 16259 - Urban Art
New Bond Street, 5 Feb 2008

www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/pubweb/publicSite.r?sContinent=eur&screen=Catalogue&iSaleNo=16259

Banksy, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Antony Micallef, Adam Neate, Faile, Paul Insect, Space Invader, Swoon, D*Face, Shepard Fairey.

Bonhams will hold the first auction devoted solely to Urban Art at its flagship salerooms in New Bond Street on Tuesday 5 February 2008. This innovative sale will document the incredible phenomenon of urban art by exploring its transition from an underground subculture to the mainstream.

The auction will focus on a series of artists inspired by the aesthetic of the street including but not limited to Banksy, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Antony Micallef, Adam Neate, Faile, Paul Insect, Space Invader, Swoon, D*Face and Jamie Hewlett. Their work is represented in mediums that are almost exclusive to this culture, such as stencil spray painting and flyposting.

Gareth Williams, Urban Art Specialist at Bonhams says, "Urban art is art at its most accessible, available in the public arena for universal appreciation. However, by definition it is also an ephemeral art form, often disappearing as fast as it appears. By transposing their images from street wall to canvas, urban artists are now creating a permanent legacy without compromising the vitality of their art form and it is these works which are currently taking the market by storm."

Highlights in the sale include:
Banksy 'Laugh Now', stencil spray paint on canvas - Estimate: £40,000 - 60,000

Banksy, 'Kate Moss', screenprint - Estimate: £20,000-30,000

Banksy, 'Di-Faced Tenners', screenprint - Estimate: £5,000-7,000
Whether it is by surreptitiously inserting his works in the world in the world's major museums, or replacing the Queen's head with Diana's on his infamous £10 notes, Banksy's guerrilla-tactic stunts know no bounds. His high profile admirers include Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Jude Law, Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper.

Paul Insect ,'Elvis' from the 'Dead Rebels Series' oil on canvas - Estimate: £5,000-8,000
Insect's first solo exhibition, 'Bullion' was cancelled this summer when Damien Hirst purchased the entire collection, for a rumoured £500,000.

Faile, 'London 12', stencil spray paint on wooden palette - Estimate: £3,000-5,000
This group's works feature distinctive 'cut and paste' imagery, that echo the way ripped street posters reveal images from further posters layered beneath.

Keith Haring, 'Pop VI', screenprint - Estimate: £1,500-2,000
One of the godfather's of street art, Haring was a graphic arts student drop-out who was drawn New York's graffiti culture in the early 1980's. He gained mass recognition for chalking hundreds of images on the New York subway.

Having secured international recognition by achieving exceptional prices for urban artists such as Banksy and Anthony Micallef, Bonhams is now the market leader in this field. Past results include Banksy's 'Space Girl and Bird', designed as the artwork for Blur's Think Tank album, which soared twenty times its estimate to fetch £288,000 in April 2007 – a world auction record for his work at the time.

[butterfly]

For the Sale viewings here are the opening times

3 Feb 2009 11:00-15:00 New Bond Street

4 Feb 2008 09:00-17:00 New Bond Street

5 Feb 2008 09:00-17:00 New Bond Street

[Run Pig Run]

any hutch?

[G-Man]

The catalogue is worth ordering , its got a cool Laugh Now cover and some great pics of the Banksy pieces

You get one for about a score from their website

[manty]

Well i'd go for the Neate (apprentice) but I dont like it so wont:-)

I might go for lot 53 neate, he looks like how i feel on a Friday

And will keep an eye on the tart collage

Looking at it again, theres only a few lots all told. I do wonder if any 'money' is going to bother going

[leumasdarnley]

Damn man there is some sweet shit going up bomb hugger canvas I'm drooling. ;D

[Poppy Sunshine]

I'd love a Kate. Anybody want to sell one?

[veralynn]

I fear some competition for Lot 53......

[crazyarsemother]

I have a a signed HMW so I interested in the one in the sale and how much it goes for. I noticed that on the image there is a ghost image in reverse upside down. Almost as if they got the paper the wrong way up when they did the first black covering. Can anyone else see it or is it my PC?

[jonpud]

Strange, the Radar Rat aint signed!?

[Deleted]

i really like the dan baldwin canvasses, but 15-20k estimate puts me short by about 15-20k.

[Zippy]

Slammer -buy my Dan Baldwin prints then. Far cheaper!
Z

[fumanchu]

how come the radar rat is unsigned? wasnt the edition of 75 all signed? i thought the unsigned edition was unavailable anyone got any info on this?

[Deleted]

zippy said:

Slammer -buy my Dan Baldwin prints then. Far cheaper!
Z

just originals for me now thanks zippy, with the exception of neate. i do like the majority of dans prints though. just i think i'll get saving for a nice one off m8.

[mammal2]

Even Banksy slammer??? Lend us a quid!

[guest2]

rattusamorus said:

I also meant to say that the estimates look suspiciously. I agree with what people have said that when lots go higher the auction becomes a "success", it is possibly also a ploy to lure people to attend under the mistaken impression they might pick up a bargain. I believe the market will speak and there will be no "bargains"

From my experience with auctions there are 2 types of estimates and the seller dictates these. Normally the low estimate is always the reserve, if they are more than confident with the piece they are selling then having a low estimate is an advantage as it'll create more interest with people thinking they will get a bargain and therefor more chance of people bidding and getting carried away and the price can end up going higher than if it had a high estimate to start with. The downside off that (if you are the seller) is that if noone bids you actually can get a bargain as the seller will have to honor the low reserve.

The other type of estimate is a realistic one which is usually the minimum the seller wants back for the sale and this is because a) they are not a risk taker and playing safe or b) they generally would rather keep it than the item go for next to nothing.

[howlinhooker]

ANY ONE GOING TUESDAY EVENING ??

[manty]

The estimate is also what the auction house will pay out to the seller should be item be damaged, lost or stolen

[guest2]

howlinhooker said:

ANY ONE GOING TUESDAY EVENING ??

I'm going tomorrow for champers

[howlinhooker]

CHAMPERS .......VERY NICE !!!!!

[Hoops]

The Radar Rat was only a Signed edition

[manchestermike]

hoops said:

The Radar Rat was only a Signed edition

Obviously not as this one is unsigned

[Daniel Silk]

www.ft.com/cms/s/775083da-d053-11dc-9309-0000779fd2ac.html

Banksy moves streets ahead

By Antony Thorncroft
Published: February 2 2008 00:49

Banksy – which might or might not be the street name of Robert Banks, who is (possibly) a 33-year-old former butcher from (certainly) Bristol – was the artistic phenomenon of 2007. After years of dodging the authorities and teasing the media, this elusive creator of witty and imaginative graffiti found monetary success thrust upon him by the auction houses. Last October “The Rude Lord”, one of a series of oils in which Banksy defaces an Old Master, sold for a record £322,900 at Sotheby’s in London.

In the possibly hyperbolic words of Sotheby’s specialist Ralph Taylor: “He is the quickest growing artist anyone has ever seen of all time.” Since Banksy refuses interviews, it is impossible to know whether the UK’s most celebrated anarchist has been corrupted by this fortune. He maintains that he still gives away much of his art through the internet, but he now has a dealer, Steve Lazarides, operating from a Soho gallery; holds exhibitions in Los Angeles; and is the artist of choice for celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Jude Law and Christina Aguilera.

The Banksy phenomenon neatly mirrors the search for novelty that has pushed demand for contemporary art to stratospheric heights, despite his curating problems. Much of his work is site specific, and the successful bidder who paid £208,000 on eBay earlier this month for a Banksy graffiti of a Victorian artist also acquired the Notting Hill wall that it decorates.

But an art movement cannot be built around one artist, and on February 5 Bonhams will raise the stakes by holding its first sale devoted to urban art, a category devised to acknowledge the fact that many of the leading creators of street art have now moved into the comfort of studios, and that Banksy has forerunners as well as followers.

With 22 works, Banksy is well represented in the auction. “Laugh Now”, designed as a backdrop to the bar in a Brighton club and depicting a line of stencilled monkeys stretching across six metres, carries a £200,000 estimate, but could easily set a new record for the artist.

There should also be interest in one of his most famous images, the acrylic “Bomb Love”, depicting a young girl hugging a bomb, with a £40,000 estimate, and in “Kate Moss”, a screenprint in which Banksy updates the celebrated Warhol portrait of Marilyn Monroe, which should make £30,000.

Another intriguing lot is the CD case of an album by socialite Paris Hilton. Banksy slipped into record stores and tampered with 500 of the albums, remixing some of the tracks and adding his own commercial messages, such as “every CD you buy puts me further out of your league”. Most of the CDs were withdrawn but this one escaped and carries a £600 estimate.

Where Banksy led, other artists followed, notably Paul Insect (again, a pseudonym seems likely) whose first show last year was scooped up in its entirety by Damien Hirst. Insect’s “Elvis”, with an £8,000 estimate, depicts Presley metamorphosing into a skeleton.

Also attracting interest is Adam Neate, a teenager, who began by leaving his paintings on wood in the street. Now with a dealer and a sell-out first show, he has a £30,000 top estimate on “The Apprentice”, an unsettling Baconesque image.

Then, on February 28, Sotheby’s will hold a sale of contemporary art with five Banksys, including his “Happy Copper” and “Mona Lisa”. The top lot is “Simple intelligence test” which, again, features monkeys; it sold at Banksy’s first show in Bristol in 2000 for about £1,000 and now carries a top estimate of £150,000.

One attraction of Banksy to the auction houses is that his art is admired by a generation that has never before entered a saleroom. They come to view the Banksys and might well be diverted by other lots, such as work by Faile, a New York collective numbering two, sometimes three, artists, whose American comic book imagery is fetching ever higher prices. Sotheby’s includes two examples on February 28.

So far, Banksy’s appeal has yet to widen out from celebrity Hollywood collectors and into the lucrative New York market but, as long as the current excitement around contemporary art continues, he looks, for all his alleged dislike of the capitalist system, like a solid investment.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, a New York graffiti artist who died in 1988 at the age of 28, is the example to all ambitious street artists. He managed to convert the energy and imagination of Bebop and the Beat poets into paint, and his drug-infused “Palm Springs Jump” (1982), a rare seminal work on offer at Christie’s in London, in the evening of February 6 (the Postwar and Contemporary sale) could make a record £5m.

Christie’s also has two works by Banksy in its day-sale, including a version of “Bomb Love”, with a £40,000 estimate.

[Hoops]

manchestermike said:

hoops said:

The Radar Rat was only a Signed edition

Obviously not as this one is unsigned

Mike trust me there where only 75 of these all Signed and released at Santas ghetto half (ish )of the edition where with a red circle and half with an orange circle...........was still available to buy afterwards as in those days Banksy never had the following like he has now

[xtinaw]

The HMV one in his book has the reflection you mention. Like it's a glossy floor. I guess he did that for the prints and not for the stencils he did

[manty]

Regiested today for this., and went and had a look. My bidding number is in the late 500s

I think it may be busy unless they started the numbers at 560 :-)

The walker peice is mahooosive, I loved it

The neate lot 53 is tiny, i wouldnt bother bidding on it if i was you ;-)

[manchestermike]

manty said:

Regiested today for this., and went and had a look. My bidding number is in the late 500s

I think it may be busy unless they started the numbers at 560 :-)

The walker peice is mahooosive, I loved it

The neate lot 53 is tiny, i wouldnt bother bidding on it if i was you ;-)

I need to send my passport details to them tomorrow and hope it's in time!

[funster]

Can't believe you'd even consider lot 53 Mike, its s**te. I'd never even consider having such a piece on my wall.... honest guv...

[funster]

Isn't the Baldwin the one from the Forster Gallery exhibition? My orginal is FS by the way if anyone's interested

[Hoops]

Mike

another thing it should be stamped like this

farm3.static.flickr.com/2287/2241859921_1f62494a93.jpg?v=0