If you were anywhere with a WiFi connection over the weekend, chances are you stumbled upon the news of Friday’s auction at Sotheby’s. Probably, you’ve seen one particular video shoot to the top of your timeline in which Banksy’s Girl with a Balloon canvas self-destructs as its lot closes at £1.04m. In the clip, the painting slips through its frame and shreds itself to the very unconvincing gasps of ‘shocked’ onlookers, as security hastily tries to salvage the work. It’s a good video, if only for the stiff ‘surprise’ in response to a stunt which saw Sotheby’s get Banksy’ed.
But history had already been made that evening: at the same auction, Jenny Saville’s Propped became the most expensive artwork ever to be sold by a living female artist. Coming under the hammer for a staggering £9.5 million, the work tripled its lower estimate of £3 million, and made Saville the highest grossing female artist alive today. So, why’s everyone talking about Banksy — hasn’t he had his moment?
The reason most of us are already bored by the Banksy vid is likely because of the way viral content proliferates on social media rather than any ill intention. We’re longing for meme-worthy, shock-inducing, laugh-a-minute content, and whatever you think of Banksy and his work, self-destruction at Sotheby’s is surely a talking point. While the news of Jenny Saville’s record sale doesn’t have the same viral flavour as the Banksy video, its lack of coverage is emblematic of the worrying gender bias that is still far too pervasive in the art world.
Despite being the most substantial amount ever paid for the work of any living female artist, it pales in comparison to the record belonging to Jeff Koons, whose Balloon Dog sculpture sold for £44,71 million at Christie’s New York in 2013 — a sum a whole four and a half times more valuable than the amount for Saville’s piece on Friday. What’s interesting about Banksy overshadowing Saville’s sale, is that her actual painting in some sad irony aims to make this very point.
Propped is a self-portrait, and it was one of the pieces that catapulted Saville to a household name, included in Charles Saatchi’s infamous 1997 exhibition, Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Gallery at the Royal Academy of Art. The painting features the artist nude, gazing down at the viewer, with a quotation from the acclaimed French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray that explores the interactions of men and women. Irigaray proposes that men use women as mirrors, forcing them to fill a weak role to satisfy their own self-absorption. In the painting, the quote is inverted and unreadable, intended to be read by the painted figure rather than by a viewer. Propped was first shown with a mirror hung opposite it so that the viewer could turn away from the picture and read the text in work and implicate themselves in the artwork.
Regardless of the energy the art market is putting into investing in female artists (and it is — slowly but surely) the disparity between the record sales of living male and female artists is depressing. In a very real way it makes clear the point that Banksy was trying to make with his stunt — that spaces like Sotheby’s are just about money, and while money may be power, it reflects an outdated systemic bias and very little else. So, as we become as desensitised to Banksy’s shredding as we are to the girl with the balloon motif, the words in Saville’s painting become more pertinent than ever: “If we continue to speak in this sameness–speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other. Again, words will pass through our bodies, above our heads and make us disappear.”