Remember the Banksy piece found and removed from Packard in June? Well, it turns out he came back and did another piece here, a canary (...in a coal mine...get it?). Just like the previous piece, this one disappeared to much publicity (many people consider it an artistic travesty to remove graffiti from a place and show it somewhere else, because as it it loses its context it also loses its meaning).
But this time it was some agent of the "owner" of the Packard Plant. Yeah, that elusive man who almost never floats to the surface (the guy listed on the actual deed is some meth dealer in jail in California). Seems he saw on the news that Banksy had created another work and paid four security guards to watch over the canary wall 24-7 until he could have it removed. He plans on selling it at auction. The best part was his statement about why he posted the guards: so nobody would "vandalize the piece", and also so nobody would come looking for it and get hurt. Come looking for it and get hurt? That's great, a guy who owns a class-A trash heap loaded with ample opportunities for instant-death, and wide open in at least a thousand places...this guy cares about our safety!
Or...could it be that previous Banksy works have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction? Technically this guy does own the plant and hence the art in it, but he also owes the city of Detroit one huge pile of property taxes if they ever catch up with him. The city hasn't been very successful going after this man so far, let's see what happens.
This item is now on private auction on eBay with a starting bid of $75,000.
1 comment:
I like the suspicious looking cats on the Banksyless wall.
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