Banksy – “In the Event of a Divorce Cut Here” @ Christie’s “Dennis Hopper” Auction

Banksy - In the Event of a Divorce Cut Here

Near the end of 2010, AM attended the afternoon session of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary auction (full results here.) This field trip was special in many ways for us. First, it served as the estate sale of legendary actor/collector Dennis Hopper’s impressive art collection with a chance for us to see many of the famous works he collected as we were shown in a video tour of his residence created before his passing. The second was to get a chance to bid on a unique variation of one of our favorite Banksy images – “Girl with Red Balloon”.

This one of a kind piece was actually named “In the Event of a Divorce Cut Here” and was a gift from Banksy to Dennis presumably to humor the actor’s final days as his then wife was attempting to divorce him and to cash in on his iconic art collection where she acutally tried to steal some of his artwork. The estimate for this masterpiece was $20-30K (USD) and of course had full Pest Control authentication. Not surprisingly, within the first minute it blew past the conservative estimate and quickly out of our meager budget. We barely had time to raise our paddle to log in a bid at 40k before the big dogs showed us that we brought a knife to a gun fight. The final price realized was $146,500 which was almost five times the high estimate. Regardless, it was a great experience as we also got to see prime works from other blue chippers such as Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Damien Hirst, Keith Haring, Kehinde Wiley, and more. Check it all out after the jump.