Banksy’s Valentine’s Day Artwork Restored By English Town Council After Brief Removal

Topline

An art installation by the elusive graffiti artist Banksy was restored after it was briefly dismantled Wednesday, according to a town council in Margate, England, continuing a trend in recent years in which the artist’s pieces have been stolen or accidentally removed.

“Valentine’s day Mascara,” a mural by Banksy, was briefly removed Wednesday.

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Key Facts

Banksy’s newest installation “Valentine’s Day Mascara”— was painted on a wall behind a freezer, and features a woman with a black eye and a missing tooth pushing a man into the real freezer.

The freezer was removed by Margate council members “on the grounds of safety,” the town said in a statement, though it was later returned after it had “been made safe.”

The town did not explicitly say what was wrong with the freezer, though it noted its removal “was necessary to carry out works to the freezer for health and safety reasons.”

The town added it will continue to communicate with the owner of the property the artwork is featured on “to understand their intentions around the preservation of the piece.”

The installation, believed by the town to be a reference to domestic violence against women, is the first artwork by Banksy to be discovered and confirmed by the artist since a mural was found in Borodyanka, Ukraine, in November 2022.

Surprising Fact

The street artist’s latest piece is not the first to be removed or dismantled. In 2020, French officials arrested six people after a mural by Banksy was stolen from Paris’ Bataclan concert hall in 2019. A pandemic-inspired piece discovered inside a London train car in 2020—which featured rats sneezing and using face masks as parachutes—was accidentally cleaned away. Another group of eight would-be thieves was arrested in December 2022 in Hostomel, Ukraine, after they attempted to remove a mural from the side of a partially destroyed home.

Big Number

$24.5 million. That’s how much a painting by Banksy, “Love is in the Bin,” sold for at auction in 2021. Sotheby’s called it the “first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction” after the painting fell into a shredder hidden at the bottom of the frame once it sold. The painting, which prior to being shredded was called “Girl With Balloon,” had originally sold for £17.5 million ($21 million).

Key Background

Banksy, the most well-known street artist in the world, regularly creates art installations in remote or unknown locations. The anonymous artist first started spray painting in Bristol in the 1990s, and his often-unannounced art has garnered international acclaim and attention over the last two decades. Some of his artworks have been removed from buildings and sold at auction, routinely fetching upward of $1 million.

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