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A green pond dotted with waterlilies, a lonely bridge. But unexpected shopping carts emerge from the water.
The artwork by Banksy Show Me the Monet, auctioned at Sotheby's, is a clear reference to Monet's waterlilies: the paintings look the same, but two shopping trolleys and a traffic cone rise from the water, this way criticizing consumerism and contemporary society.
The work was sold by Sotheby's in London on October 21st at the "Contemporary Art Evening Auction" for £ 6.4 million (£7,551,660, buyer's premium included), scoring the second highest price for a work by the street artist. The artist’s record is still Devolved Parliament, the satirical representation of an English parliament with chimpanzees instead of politicians.
Banksy: Monet between provocation and criticism of consumerism
In this work made in 2005 by Banksy, Monet is the starting point: Show Me the Monet draw inspiration from the iconic series of paintings made between 1897 and 1899 by the French impressionist master.
Banksy, however, adds trolleys and a traffic cone and seems to tell us the opposite. He thus challenges both art history and contemporary society and shows us an irremediably corrupt nature. With his typical irony, Banksy surprises us once again, touching on topics such as waste and pollution, which are today still relevant, 15 years after the creation of the work.
To quote the words of Jacob Thage, director of the Museum Jorn (Denmark) where the painting was recently exhibited: "The work is such a complex and strong comment on the institution of art, but also a comment on consumerism vs culture. Today I perceive it as one of the most important works of art in this century so far".
Show Me the Monet: Banksy and the exhibition Crude Oils
With Show Me the Monet Banksy alters a masterpiece of art history to attack the hypocrisies of contemporary society with irony and sarcasm. The work is not the only and it is part of a project that took shape in the 2005 exhibition Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin.
The artist's first "conventional" gallery exhibition (alongside the work in which Banksy reinterprets Monet) presented a series of works that similarly alter masterpieces of art history.
Among them:
- a wilted, bloomless version of Van Gogh's Sunflowers;
- a take on Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, in which a topless Union Jack boxer-wearing yob has smashed the late-night bar’s glass window;
- the popular Jack Vettriano's Singing Butler featuring a sinking oil liner and two men in hazmat suits wheeling a barrel of toxic waste.
A series of surreal and alienating visions thus strike the viewer who finds himself in front of a well-known, but altered and distorted image. Does this technique made the success of the street artist? Without any doubt with Show Me the Monet Banksy has succeeded again in making people talk about himself, increasing even more the interest of the market for his works.
