It turns out Christopher Walken and Banksy have something in common — each has now intentionally ruined one of the latter's renowned paintings.
Banksy, the anonymous British street artist known for political activism, dark humor, and satire, made headlines back in 2018 when he programmed one piece to self-destruct after it sold for $1.4 million at an auction house in London.
It was a viral spectacle and classic move for the famously enigmatic graffitist, who, at the time, shared clip of the moment as it happened on Instagram. Banksy captioned it with a fitting Pablo Picasso quote: "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge."
$1,300,000 BANKSY artwork piece just “self-destructed” right after it was sold at Sotheby’s auction!🤯😳 (An alarm sound went off and the frame began to shred the art piece.)🚨
FYI, the partially shredded painting, originally titled "Girl With Balloon" and re-named "Love In The Bin," was just sold for roughly 18x its original price.
Anyway, Christopher fully painted over a Banksy piece in Bristol, England, recently. The critically-acclaimed star covered one of the artist's real paintings while filming the finale of his BBC series The Outlaws, which premiered earlier this fall.
"We can confirm that the artwork at the end of The Outlaws was an original Banksy, and that Christopher Walken painted over that artwork during the filming of this scene, ultimately destroying it," said a spokesperson for the series, in a statement sent to The Guardian.
Interestingly but, really, not surprisingly, Banksy was in on the televised demolition effort. According to the New York Post, the artist himself green-lighted the ordeal to The Outlaws' set designers beforehand.
