YOUR Can’t Bank on it
No takers for street artist’s N.Y. works at auction
THEY’RE STILL trying to put the bank in Banksy.
Two of the elusive street artist’s New York pieces failed to garner the minimum bid when they hit the auction block Tuesday night in Miami.
The auction house, Fine Art Auctions, refused to disclose the minimum pricetags, but “Bandaged Heart,” which appeared on a Red Hook warehouse, was expected to fetch at least $400,000 and the value of a car door from the Lower East Side’s massive “Crazy Horse” installation was estimated at $200,000.
The mysterious British artist unveiled pieces throughout the city in October, leading fans — and rivals — on a breathless, daily search for each new addition to the “Better Out Than In” series.
Stephan Keszler, an Upper East Side art dealer who bought the works and presented them for auction, said he was contacted by seven or eight other de-facto owners of Banksy’s Big Apple produce, but said they wanted too much money.
Vassilio Georgiadis, one of Banksy’s lucky “victims,” was stunned when crowds suddenly gathered outside his family’s warehouse at King and Van Brunt Sts. to see the “Bandaged Heart.”
“We didn’t know it was expensive,” Georgiadis said.
A rival tagger called Omar defaced the piece almost as quickly as it appeared, and Georgiadis spent the next two weeks trying to protect it with plexiglass, lights and night surveillance.
“There were people threatening me and people pleading with me to preserve it,” he said. “I didn’t know which way to go.”
Georgiadis, who said he suf- fered heavy financial damage in Hurricane Sandy, was happy to sell to Keszler.
“That was a blessing for me — at least I could get something to recoup,” he said, though he wouldn’t specify the sale price.
Keszler, who also bought the spray-painted car door from “Crazy Horse,” did manage to sell another Banksy creation on Tuesday. “Kissing Coppers,” a spray-painted stencil of two passionately intertwined English bobbies, sold for $575,000.
He’s sold 11 of Banksy’s major street art pieces in less than three years, reaching prices as high as $1.1 million.
The New York exhibition raised Banksy’s profile and has made his work even more valuable, Keszler said.
Not that he’s easy to collect. The Red Hook piece weighed about 7,000 pounds by the time it was cut from the concrete wall.
That artwork is especially interesting because of the trash talking between Banksy and Omar, street art expert Sebastien Laboureau said.
Below Omar’s tag, someone else — presumably Banksy — wrote, “is a jealous little girl.”
It shows the running debate between street artists, Laboureau said.
“To my point of view, it makes the wall even more valuable,” he said, “because it’s a testament.”
The pieces will be available online for the next 30 days, Fine Art Auctions officials said.