Banksy's painting Game Changer has today sold for a record £14.4m (£16.7m with fees) at Christie's in London against its estimate of £2.5m-£3.5m. All of the hammer price will be donated by the artist to "help support health organisations and charities across the UK that enhance the care and treatment provided by the NHS", a statement says. Christie’s will "donate a significant portion of the Buyer’s Premium to these causes" too.
After lengthy competitive bidding, two bidders—one an online bidder in the British Virgin Islands the other on the phone with Christie's Tessa Lord—ended up locking horns for the work. It was knocked down eventually to Lord's phone bidder.
The previous record for a work by Banksy was set in 2019 by the enormous 2009 canvas Devolved Parliament, which sold at Sotheby's in London for £8.5m (£9.9m including fees).
Game Changer, an original work on canvas, appeared suddenly last May at the University Hospital Southampton as a thank you, Banksy says, to the staff during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. It depicts a little boy playing with superhero toys, discarding Batman and Spiderman and instead choosing to play with a masked nurse in the Red Cross uniform.
The canvas was accompanied by a note when it appeared, reading: "Thanks for all you’re doing. I hope this brightens the place up a bit, even if it’s only black and white." A reproduction will remain on view at the hospital.
David French, the interim chief executive at University Hospital Southampton, says: “This incredible gift will be invaluable in helping us to focus on promoting and protecting the welfare of our staff as they heal and recover from the last year. As a charitable gift it ensures our staff have a say in how money is spent to benefit them, our patients and our community and is a fantastic way to thank and reward them for the sacrifices they’ve made."
The Banksy was among the cluster of early lots in Christie’s 20th Century Art Evening Sale—a bit of a misnomer since the sale actually started in the afternoon and the first batch of works offered were not made in the 20th century at all, but rather in the past couple of years.
Most of the day's excitement centred on the first ten items, including the $41.7m Basquiat notionally sold in Hong Kong as a single lot sale, but also listed as “lot 1” for the ensuing auction. The rest of the sale—of 20th century works by everyone from Dubuffet to Picasso to Bacon to Sisley—trundled along well enough. Christie’s may just have rebranded their Impressionist and Modern art, and post-war and contemporary art sales into 20th and 21st Century Art auctions, but this event read more as “an assortment of things we can find and think we can sell”.
With little opportunity to spend, money was burning holes in some high-net-worth pockets as some very fresh works by hard-to-get younger artists—bought in the past few years directly from their galleries—were presented on the secondary market.
