New York (AP) – When the enigmatic street artist Banksy painted a heart -shaped balloon covered with a bandage on …
New York (AP) – When the enigmatic street artist Banksy A heart -shaped balloon covered with a dressing on the wall of a Brooklyn warehouse, the indescribable brick building was instantly transformed into an artistic destination and the canvas of an improbable graffiti battle.
Almost as soon as Banksy revealed the play in 2013, an anonymous tagger collapsed and flown away and spraying The words “Omar NYC” in red next to the ball, to the dismay of the spectators.
A few days later, someone in the stencil “is a little girl” in white and pink next to the Omar label, followed by an apparently sarcastic phrase in black: “I remember my first label.” Some believe that it is Banksy himself who returned secretly to the scene to add the replica.
The Battle of Apparent Graffiti did not end there. Another tagger also tried to leave his brand, but was blocked by security guards. Today, the “Shan” sentence is still visible in clear purple painting.
Maria Georgiadis, whose family had the now demolished warehouse and finally removed the wall section to preserve the work, says that Graffiti Pasche is typically New York.
“It looks like an in progress war,” she said recently. “They literally go there on the wall.”
Works of art for auction
The preserved wall, nicknamed “Battle to Survive A Broken Heart”, will be sold on May 21 at Guernsey, The New York Auction House.
Georgiadis, a teacher from Brooklyn, says that the sale is bit bitter. His father, Vassilios Georgiadis, headed his company to reduce the roofs and asbestos of the warehouse decorated with the ball.
He died four years ago at 67 years ago from a heart attack, which is why some of the sales products will be given to the American Heart Association.
“It's just very important for us because he loved it and he was so full of love,” said Maria Georgiadis during a recent visit to the art warehouse where the play was stored for more than a decade. “It's like the heart of bandage. We all have love, but we all went through things and we just put a small group and continue to move, right? That's how I take it.”
The wall section of almost 4 tonnes and 6 feet high (3.6 metrics, 1.8 meters) is one of the many guerrilla works that the British artist is secret during a New York residence in 2013.
At the time, Banksy announced the work by publishing on his website Photos and an audio track Recorded in part in a creaky voice induced by helium.
Banksy may not have a painted response to Tagger
The president of the House of Auction of Guernsey, Arlan Ettinger, said that it was impossible to know it with certainty because Banksy works clandestinely. But he said that the stencil and the neat wording “strongly suggest that it was a sweet way for Banksy to put the other artist in his place”.
Ulrich Blanché, professor of art history at Heidelberg University in Germany, qualified the “very well executed” stencil coin in part because of Banksy's decision to place it in the Port area of Brooklyn in Red Hook.
“This part of New York was not easy to reach at that time,” he said by e-mail. “Banksy wanted people to go to New York locations that they have never seen them and also love them.”
But Blanche wondered if the text with an additional stencil was really the work of Banksy, saying that the choice and the design of words do not seem to behave with the style of the artist at the time.
“Calling a graffiti A” girl “is not something that Banksy would do in 2013. It is misogynical and immature in a sexist way,” he wrote. “Three different fonts that do not correspond and three colors-why should it do this? Too unnecessarily elaborated without reasons. So I think it was added by someone else. “
Blanché also said that he was ambivalent as for the pending sale, noting that Banksy generally does not allow his street parts for sale. At the same time, it includes the burden imposed on the owners to protect and maintain them.
“Banksy's works should be preserved, but for the community for which they have been made,” he said. “They should not be transformed into goods. They are made and designed for a specific location. Not portable. Not Vendable. “
Banksy spokesperson refused to comment on Friday.
Difficult to determine the price
Maria Georgiadis’s brother Anastasios said his father also hoped to keep the room in red hook after cutting it off from the wall and framed in thick steel for guard.
The eldest Georgiadis, he said, considered work as the centerpiece of a development of retail and housing on the property, a dream he did not realize. The property has since been sold by the family.
Ettinger said it was difficult to say what the room could recover. There are few precedents for the sale of a piece of banks of this size, he said.
In 2018, a canvas that was part of Banksy's “Girl With Balloon” series sold in London for 1.04 million pounds (1.4 million dollars), only for famous self-destruction In front of a stunned auction.
Maria Georgiadis said that she hoped that the one who buys the “broken heart” finds the same beauty and means that her father drew from the play.
When Banksy painted it, the family business recovered from destructive floods caused by Hurricane Sandy the previous year. Georgiadis remembers that his father had no idea who was Banksy but was moved by the simple image.
“My father had in his head that Banksy knew what we have experienced,” she said. “He said,” Can you believe it Maria? ” It's a heart. “”
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Follow Philip Marcelo at Twitter.com/philmarcelo.
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