Banksy’s 2005 painting “Show Me The Monet,” his environmentally conscious version of the famous Claude Monet painting “Water Lily Pond” from 1899, is coming up for auction at Sotheby’s London. It will be part of the auctioneers Contemporary Art Evening Auction that will be held on October 21, 2020. It is currently estimated to fetch anywhere from 3 to 5 million British pounds ($3.9 to $6.5 Million).
According to My Modern Art site, the artwork was originally created as part of Banksy’s crude oil series for his “gallery of re-mixed masterpieces, vandalism, and vermin” that ran for a little over a week in a small London shop in 2005. The show featured 22 paintings by great masters as reinterpreted by Banksy. This included pieces showing Van Gogh’s Sunflowers wilted and a man in Union Jack shorts breaking the window at Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks diner.
“Show Me the Monet” features Monet’s idyllic Giverny lily pond with a few intruders. Grocery shopping carts and an orange traffic cone bobbing in the water bring to light Banksy’s dystopian view of society.
According to Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s European Head of Contemporary Art, “in one of his most important paintings, Banksy has taken Monet’s iconic depiction of the Japanese bridge in the impressionist master’s famous garden at Giverny and transformed it into a modern-day fly-tipping spot. Ever prescient as a voice of protest and social dissent, here Banksy shines a light on society’s disregard for the environment in favor of the wasteful excesses of consumerism.”
Prior to the auction, Banksy’s work will be exhibited in London, New York, and Hong Kong.
