So Banksy has visited your property. Now what? :NPR

BRISTOL, ENGLAND – What do What do you do if you discover that Banksy has visited your property?

It’s a question Dennis Stinchcombe asked himself about 10 years ago after a strange piece of art appeared overnight on a wall outside wide plainsa youth center he runs on the outskirts of Bristol.

“(My son) called me and said, ‘Dad, you’re not going to believe this, but I think there’s a Banksy on the wall,'” Stinchcombe, 68, recalls.

The piece was called Mobile lovers.

It showed an embraced couple looking over their shoulders; their eyes were not looking at each other but at their respective smartphones.

Within 24 hours, Banksy, a Bristol native who attended Broad Plain as a child, claimed responsibility for the article about your website.

But it wasn’t until hundreds of people began showing up daily in front of the mural that Stinchcombe realized how valuable this piece was and the intense and costly responsibility he now had to protect it.

“We got threats from different idiots who came in vans saying they were going to damage it,” says Stinchcombe, who had a team of parents help him move the piece inside to protect it, and rightly so.

The piece was eventually sold to a private collector for £563,000 (about $700,000), with the proceeds returned to the centre.

But the sale was only possible thanks to a rare letter of authentication that Banksy agreed to draft for Stinchcombe.

“Without authenticity, no one believes it,” says Steven Lazarides, a London-based artist who got his start in the art world as Banksy’s official photographer in the late 1990s.

Lazarides says that without official authentication from Banksy himself, most art galleries and collectors wouldn’t think of touching a Banksy.

There is a practical side to this: authentications protect Banksy from fakes (which are still common) and the law (admitting criminal harm has its own implications).

But Lazarides says there is a broader philosophical reason why Banksy has generally avoided authenticating his street art and why the sale of these pieces is largely frowned upon.

“It becomes a case of someone trying to sell (a Banksy) as a work of art when it was never intended as a work of art,” he says.

“It’s a piece of graffiti. There’s a difference between what (the artists) do on the street and what they do in the studio.”

But this spirit has not been enough to stop people from thinking about making profits.

Julián Usher directs the Eight Red Art Gallery in east London.

On Valentine’s Day 2023, he received a call from a couple in the British seaside town of Margate.

“It’s a lady who got on the phone and said, ‘I think I have a Banksy on my wall,'” Usher recalls.

This piece was called Valentine’s mask. It depicted a 1950s housewife with a black eye locking her husband in a refrigerator. She seems to highlight domestic violence.

Usher quickly sent a team of excavators to help dismantle the piece of property and shipped it to London.

It is currently on display at the Yamaha store in Soho as Usher tries to find a buyer, something that will take time without a Banksy authentication certificate.

“The important thing from my point of view is to keep the artwork alive,” Usher says. “Yes, we can make some money from it, but that’s not the overall goal.”

Usher believes that once sold, the piece could fetch up to £3 million ($3.7 million). Most of the profits will go back to the owner, with a cut going to Usher’s gallery.

Usher also says a six-figure sum will be donated to a local charity that helps victims of domestic violence.

When asked how he feels about the fact that what he is doing is still controversial in the art world (i.e. taking street art off the streets and making money from it), he responds.

From Usher’s point of view, he’s just trying to help the homeowners who get caught up in this whole mess.

For him, there is not enough scrutiny against Banksy for defacing people’s property.

“Unfortunately, with street work, (Banksy) doesn’t ask permission,” Usher says. “He’s actually the richest vandal on the planet. He throws this into someone’s house or property.”

Due to his secrecy, we do not know how much Banksy is worth, although some of his works have sold at auction for millions.

Usher says Banksy’s unwillingness to issue authentication certificates is responsible for the creation of this gray market.

Dennis Stinchcombe says that even with the headaches, the Banksy saga is one of the biggest things to happen to the Broad Plain Youth Center. Before the Banksy mural appeared on its wall, the center was on the brink of bankruptcy.

“If it wasn’t for Banksy, we would have closed 10 years ago,” says Stinchcombe.

Now that the center is facing financial difficulties again, Stinchcombe says he is ready to experience this adventure again if Banksy wants to consider putting a second mural on his wall.

When asked why he thinks Banksy chose Broad Plain for Mobile lovers, Stinchcombe speculates it has something to do with what Banksy learned while attending the center as a child.

“There are values, and life is really what you make of it,” says Stinchcombe. “We teach kids that if they want something, they have to go out and get it, and if they don’t put it in, they can’t get it out.”