Banksy’s version of Monet’s Water Lilies set to fetch up to £5million at auction
STREET artist Banksy’s reimagining of Monet’s Water Lilies is to be auctioned for between £3million and £5million.
He added abandoned shopping trolleys and a traffic cone to the Impressionist’s original for his 2005 painting Show Me The Monet.
The oil-on-canvas work will be auctioned in a live-streamed event at Sotheby’s in central London on October 21.
It formed part of a series entitled Crude Oil, which “remixes” masterpieces.
The series also includes Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers wilting or dead in their vase, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks confronted by an angry man in Union Jack boxer shorts, and Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe re-faced with Kate Moss.
Helena Newman of Sotheby’s called the Banksy piece a “tongue-in-cheek mark on what has been held up by generations as an icon of Western art history”.
"Long considered the apogee of impressionism, Claude Monet's instantly recognisable portrayal of the Japanese bridge at Giverny was a scene the artist returned to in the last three decades of his life.
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"Residing in the world's most esteemed collections, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York and London's National Gallery, only one or two of these fabled works are left in private hands.
"They are, for many collectors, the holy grail - the sort of work a serious collector will live in hope of acquiring.
"And here we see Banksy take ownership of that, by putting a tongue-in-cheek mark on what has been held up by generations as an icon of Western art history."
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