Banksy’s ‘Show me the Monet’

Unless you’ve been avoiding the news (I don’t blame you), you’ll know that Banksy’s painting ‘Show Me the Monet’ was recently sold at Sotheby’s auction for over £7.5 million. The piece is part of his series ‘Crude Oils’, which was exhibited in a small shop in London for over a week in October 2005.

It’s a parody of Claude Monet’s 1899 oil painting ‘Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies’. Banksy’s version retains a similar impressionist technique, with the addition of discarded shopping trolleys and a traffic cone semi-submerged in the pond. The European head of contemporary art at Sotheby’s says that with his alterations, “Banksy shines a light on society’s disregard for the environment in favour of the wasteful excesses of consumerism”. It's the second-highest that Banksy’s work has sold for at auction, the first being ‘Devolved Parliament’, a satirical piece depicting the House of Commons full of chimpanzees, which sold for £9.9 million in 2019.

Show Me the Monet’ surpassed the estimate of £3 - £5 million, with five collectors competitively bidding for almost nine minutes. It didn’t come with any surprises though, unlike the framed print of his famous ‘Girl with Balloon’, which was destroyed upon sale, dropping through a rigged frame and partially shredding itself. This performance was titled ‘Love is in the Bin’, and the ripped remains are preserved with their frame. It is the first artwork in history that was created during a live auction, very ‘on-brand’ for Banksy, who is known for his controversial works that lend a strong political commentary.

With ‘Show Me the Monet’, Banksy’s intended message was a commentary on environmental pollution, and according to Sotheby’s, he’s said of the context to the piece: “The real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business [...] exactly the people who put gold-framed pictures of landscapes on their walls and try to tell the rest of us how to behave.” It's fitting then, that the base of Banksy’s painting is a dreamy Impressionist masterpiece, whose primary function is aesthetic appreciation of nature.

The reception that ‘Show Me the Monet’ received was unexpected, perhaps because it reflects back at us a global issue that has gained increasing traction and urgency. Discarded litter and upturned shopping trolleys in ponds and rivers isn’t a rare sight, yet even so Banksy implies that it's not even these actions that are at fault. It's the way that Banksy holds a mirror up to society through his work which is what makes it so relevant, and for this, people are willing to pay millions.

See original article