LONDON.- Banksys dissident version of Claude Monets Impressionist masterpiece has gone on public display in
Sothebys New Bond Street galleries today for a special two-day preview, before it is unveiled in New York and Hong Kong later this month [34-35 New Bond Street, W1S 2RT]. Show me the Monet (2005) will then return to London, where it will be offered for sale with an estimate of £3-5 million on 21 October. The painting will star as a highlight of Sothebys third livestream auction event, Modernités / Contemporary, which brings together two sales of Modern and Contemporary art held in sequence from Paris and London.
Show me the Monet was first shown 15 years ago as part of Banksys second gallery exhibition at 100 Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill, West London. Titled Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin, the free-admission show comprised 22 of the artists hand painted canvases, hung in a disused shop space. The exhibition remained on view for two weeks, attracting large crowds, queues and a headline on the evening news during its opening night. Before entering, visitors had to sign a waiver and prepare to share the space with 164 rats, which Banksy had purposefully hired from a film and theatre company to complement his artworks, quite literally overrunning the temporary venue with rodents**. Fortunately, no rats will feature in the Sothebys display.
Created in 2005, Show me the Monet hails from a series collectively known as the Crude Oils, comprising what Banksy has termed remixes of canonical artworks. In it, the artist takes and subverts the language of art history to recreate renowned artworks with his own witty reworkings, and with his own distinct and equally free, brushstrokes: among them, Vincent van Goghs Sunflowers portrayed wilting or dead in their vase; Edward Hoppers Nighthawks augmented by an angry man in Union Jack boxer shorts moments after breaking the bar window with a chair, and Andy Warhols Marilyn Monroe re-faced with Kate Moss. The present work may be interpreted as a comment on consumerist culture, a criticism of the commercialisation of art, a lament for the demise of the environment, or all of the above.
Sitting within a larger body of work, the series is an extension of Banksys earlier investigations into painting when he began putting his own stamp on conventional looking oil canvases bought at flea markets around London. The first public display of a work from this series took place in 2003 in Tate Britain, when the artist secretly installed Crimewatch UK Ruined the Countryside for All of Us - a small oil painting of a bucolic country scene covered with blue and white police tape. In the artists own words, If you want to survive as a graffiti writer when you go indoors, I figured your only option is to carry on painting over things that dont belong to you there either. The sale of Show me the Monet comes a year after Banksy's Devolved Parliament sold at Sothebys London for a record breaking £9.9 million ($12.2 million).
Three of Monets most spectacular large paintings from this series will also be brought together at the National Gallery in London for the first-ever exhibition of decorative arts by the Impressionist painters in September 2021.
In one of his most important paintings, Banksy has taken Monets iconic depiction of the Japanese bridge in the Impressionist masters famous garden at Giverny and transformed it into a modern-day fly-tipping spot. More canal than idyllic lily pond, Banksy litters Monets composition with discarded shopping trollies and a fluorescent orange traffic cone. Ever prescient as a voice of protest and social dissent, here Banksy shines a light on societys 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 wouldnt be complete without a big Banksy moment. ---Alex Branczik, Sothebys European Head of Contemporary Art
Long considered the apogée of Impressionism, Claude Monets instantly-recognisable portrayal of the Japanese Bridge at Giverny was a scene the artist returned to in the last three decades of his life. Residing in the worlds most esteemed collections, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Londons National Gallery, only one or two of these fabled works are left in private hands. They are, for many collectors, the holy grail the sort of work a serious collector will live in hope of acquiring. And here we see Banksy take ownership of that, by putting a tongue-in-cheek mark on what has been held up by generations as an icon of Western Art History. ---Helena Newman, Worldwide Head of Sothebys Impressionist & Modern Art Department & Chairman of Sothebys Europe