So Banksy visited your property. Now what? : NPR

BRISTOL, ENGLAND – What TO DO What do you do if you find that Banksy has visited your property?

It’s a question Dennis Stinchcombe asked himself about 10 years ago after a strange piece of art appeared overnight on a wall outside Broad Plain, a youth center that he runs in the suburbs of Bristol.

“(My son) called me and said, ‘Dad, you’re not going to believe this, but I think there’s a Banksy on the wall,'” Stinchcombe, 68, recalled.

The piece was called Mobile lovers.

It showed an embracing couple looking over each other’s shoulders – their eyes not looking at each other but at their respective smartphones.

Within 24 hours, Banksy, a Bristol native who attended Broad Plain as a child, claimed responsibility for the article on his website.

But it wasn’t until hundreds of people began showing up daily to the mural that Stinchcombe realized how valuable the work was and the intense and costly responsibility he now had to protect it.

“We got threats from different idiots coming in vans saying they were going to damage it,” says Stinchcombe, who asked a team of parents to help him move the piece inside to protect her – and for good reason.

The piece was ultimately sold to a private collector for £563,000 (around $700,000), with the proceeds going to the center.

But the sale was only made possible thanks to a rare letter of authentication that Banksy agreed to issue for Stinchcombe.

“Without authenticity, no one buys it,” says Steven Lazarides, a London-based artist who started in the art world as Banksy’s official photographer in the late 1990s.

Lazarides says that without official authentication from Banksy himself, most art galleries and collectors wouldn’t think of touching a Banksy.

There is a practical side to this: authentications protect Banksy from counterfeits (which are still common) and from the law (admitting to committing criminal damage has its own implications.)

But Lazarides says there’s a larger philosophical reason why Banksy has generally been reluctant to authenticate his street art and why the sale of these pieces is widely frowned upon.

“It becomes a case of someone trying to sell (a Banksy) as a work of art when it was never intended as a work of art,” he says.

“It’s graffiti. There’s a difference between what (artists) do in the street and what they do in the studio.”

But this philosophy was not enough to stop people from thinking about making a profit.

Julian Usher runs the Red Eight Art Gallery in east London.

On Valentine’s Day 2023, he received a call from a couple in the British seaside town of Margate.

“It was a lady on the phone who said, ‘I think I have a Banksy on my wall,'” Usher recalls.

This piece was called Valentine’s Day Mascara. It depicted a 1950s housewife with a black eye locking her husband in a refrigerator. It seems to shine a light on domestic violence.

Valentine’s Day Mascara by street artist Banksy, on the side of a house in Margate, England.

William Edwards/AFP via Getty Images

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William Edwards/AFP via Getty Images

Valentine’s Day Mascara by street artist Banksy, on the side of a house in Margate, England.

William Edwards/AFP via Getty Images

Usher quickly sent a team of excavators to help dismantle the piece from the property and sent it to London.

It’s currently on display at the Yamaha store in Soho while Usher tries to find a buyer – which will take time without a certificate of authentication from Banksy.

“From my point of view, what’s important is to keep the artwork alive,” Usher says. “Yes, we can make money from it, but that’s not the overall goal.”

Usher estimates that once sold, the piece could fetch up to £3 million ($3.7 million). Most of the profits will go to the owner, with a cut taken from Usher’s gallery.

Usher also says a six-figure sum will be donated to a local charity that helps victims of domestic violence.

When asked what he thinks about the fact that what he’s doing remains controversial in the art world – that is, taking street art off the street and making money from it – he answers.

From Usher’s perspective, he’s just trying to help homeowners who get caught up in all this mess.

For him, there is not enough control against Banksy for damaging people’s property.

“Unfortunately, with street work, (Banksy) doesn’t ask permission,” Usher says. “He’s seriously the richest vandal on the planet. He just throws this stuff at someone’s house or property.”

Due to his secrecy, we don’t know how much Banksy is worth, although some of his works have sold at auction for millions.

Usher claims that Banksy’s reluctance to issue certificates of authentication is what created this gray market.

Dennis Stinchcombe says even with the headaches, the Banksy saga is one of the greatest things to ever happen to the Broad Plain Youth Center. Before the Banksy mural appeared on its wall, the center was on the verge of bankruptcy.

“Without Banksy we would have closed our doors 10 years ago,” says Stinchcombe.

With the center once again facing financial difficulties, Stinchcombe says he’s willing to do it again if Banksy plans to install a second mural on his wall.

When asked why he thinks Banksy chose Broad Plain for Mobile lovers, Stinchcombe thinks it has something to do with what Banksy learned from attending the center as a child.

“Values ​​exist, and life is really what you make it,” Stinchcombe says. “We teach kids that if you want something, you have to go out and get it – and if you don’t put it in, you can’t take it out.”