§74 ‘Love is in the Bin’: Incomplete intensions and inauthentic imitations– Part II
In Note §68, I considered the tension between monetary value and artworks in light of the spectacle surrounding Banksy’s Love is in the Bin. As the event and the artwork settle as a clear moment in the history of art, we can now begin to elaborate further on the implications of this artistic happening. Here are two further observations:
Incomplete intentions:
As discussions surrounding Banksy’s intention behind the artwork/performance continue, it has now been confirmed that Banksy had originally intended for the Girl with Balloon to be completely shredded and for it to lay on the floor beneath the empty frame. The artwork then, with its half shredded canvas, opens up the question of whether it is in fact ‘incomplete’, and whether, as Will Gompertz*suggests, this makes it of less value had Banksy’s original tensions been realised despite expressing a form of his iconoclastic vision.
Inauthentic imitations:
When a Banksy collector imitated the stunt, slashing up a limited print of the same painting with a Stanley knife, it rested on their mistaken belief that this would double its value, not realising that by virtue of being un-authenticated this action would have the opposite effect. The print in question was instantly devalued from £40,000 to £1. Had the collector read Simmel he may have avoided this error. This is so as Simmel makes abundantly clear:
‘If the greatest works of art that we possess — for example, the Delphic charioteer and Praxiteles’ ‘Hermes’, Botticelli’s ‘Spring’, the Mona Lisa, the Medici tombs and Rembrandt’s self- portrait — existed in a thousand identical copies, then it would make a big difference to the happiness of mankind, but their ideal, objectively aesthetic value or their value in the history of art would in no way be enhanced above the point that a single, already existing copy represents.’ (Simmel, p.295)
References:
Simmel, G. (2011) The Philosophy of Money, Routledge: London
Originally published at anowmedia.com on November 16, 2018.
