Banksy This article is more than 16 years oldPortrait of the artist and his spray can
This article is more than 16 years oldA work of art is coming up for auction this month that many owners of defaced property, a scattering of museum curators and journalists have pined to get their hands on: a self-portrait by Banksy.
The graffiti artist, so bankable that a wall with one of his stencilled works was recently chopped up with an angle grinder and stolen, is said to be from Bristol - where the council recently put a preservation order on a mural of a guilty lover hanging by his fingertips from a bedroom windowsill - and to have been born Robert Banks. Keep Britain Tidy has described his work as "pure vandalism".
His stunts include a small rock painting of a caveman pushing a supermarket trolley that spent several days in the British Museum before officials spotted it, and a real elephant painted pink and gold during a Los Angeles show.
When £102,000 was paid at Sotheby's in February for his Bombing Middle England he posted a piece on his website captioned: "I can't believe you morons buy this shit." The portrait, to be sold by Bonham's, shows a chimp-faced figure and is predicted to fetch £30,000.
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