Via a friend who asks: "Is the picture worth more or less than when the hammer came down?"That's just the way she looks at the world.
From The Guardian:
Buyer of Girl With Balloon, who paid £1.04m for work, says she has her ‘own piece of art history’
The buyer of the Banksy print that was partially shredded immediately after its auction will go ahead with the £1m purchase amid claims that its value will have significantly increased following the self-destruction.Coincidentally both the buyer and my emailer used the "hammer" terminology.
The art world was left stunned when around half of Girl With Balloon, one of the street artist’s most famous stencil drawings, was reduced to ribbons by a shredder built into the frame after the hammer went down at Sotheby’s in London on 5 October.
Strips of the 2006 piece were shown dangling from the bottom of the frame as technicians at the auction house swiftly took it off the wall and carried it out of view. The auctioneer declared to the packed saleroom: “We are going to move on.”
The transformed work has been given a new title, Love Is in the Bin, and has been granted a certificate by Pest Control, Banksy’s authentication body.
The buyer, a female European collector and a longstanding client of Sotheby’s, confirmed on Thursday that she would proceed with the £1.04m deal. “When the hammer came down last week and the work was shredded, I was at first shocked, but gradually I began to realise that I would end up with my own piece of art history,” she said....MORE
Wait, what? Maybe it's not a coincidence!
