NEW YORK (AP) — When the enigmatic street artist Banksy spray-painted a heart-shaped balloon covered with a Band-Aid on the wall of a Brooklyn warehouse, the nondescript brick building was instantly transformed into an art destination and the canvas of an unlikely graffiti battle.
Almost as soon as Banksy revealed the piece back in 2013, an anonymous tagger brazenly walked up and spray painted the words “Omar NYC” in red beside the balloon, to the dismay of onlookers.
Days later, someone stenciled “is a little girl” in white and pink beside Omar’s tag, followed by a seemingly sarcastic phrase in black: “I remember MY first tag.” Some think it was Banksy himself who secretly returned to the scene to add the rejoinder.
The apparent graffiti battle didn’t end there. Another tagger also attempted to leave his mark but was stymied by security guards. Today the phrase “SHAN” is still visible in light purple paint.
Maria Georgiadis, whose family owned the now-demolished warehouse and ultimately removed the section of wall to preserve the artwork, says the graffiti pastiche is quintessentially New York.
“It looks like a war going on,” she said recently. “They’re literally going at it on the wall.”
Artwork up for auction
The preserved wall, dubbed “Battle to Survive a Broken Heart,” will be going up for sale May 21 at Guernsey’s, the New York auction house.
Georgiadis, a Brooklyn schoolteacher, says the sale is bittersweet. Her father, Vassilios Georgiadis, ran his roofing and asbestos abatement company from the warehouse adorned with the balloon.
He died four years ago at age 67 from a heart attack, which is why some of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to the American Heart Association.
“It’s just very significant to us because he loved it and he was just so full of love,” Maria Georgiadis said on a recent visit to the art warehouse where the piece was stored for more than a decade. “It’s like the bandage heart. We all have love, but we’ve all went through things and we just put a little Band-Aid over and just keep on moving, right? That’s how I take it.”
The nearly 4-ton, 6-foot-tall (3.6-metric ton, 1.8-meter-tall) wall section is one of a number of guerrilla works the famously secretive British artist made during a New York residency in 2013.
At the time, Banksy heralded the work by posting on his website photos and an audio track recorded partly in a squeaky, helium-induced voice.
Banksy may not have painted response to tagger
Guernsey auction house President Arlan Ettinger said it is impossible to know for certain because Banksy works clandestinely. But he said the neat stenciling and wording “strongly suggest that this was a gentle way for Banksy to put the other artist in his place.”
Ulrich Blanché, an art history lecturer at Heidelberg University in Germany, called the piece a “very well executed” stencil notable partly because of Banksy’s decision to place it in Brooklyn’s port area of Red Hook.
“This part of NYC was not easy to reach at that time,” he said by email. “Banksy wanted people to go to places in NYC they never have seen and love them as well.”
But Blanche questioned whether the additional stenciled text was truly the work of Banksy, saying the word choice and design don’t appear to comport with the artist’s style at the time.
“To call a graffiti guy a ‘girl’ is not something Banksy would do in 2013. This is misogynic and immature in a sexist way,” he wrote. “Three different fonts that do not match and three colors — why should he do that? Too unnecessarily elaborated without reasons. So I think this was added by someone else.”
Blanché also said he is ambivalent about the pending sale, noting Banksy usually doesn’t authorize his street pieces for sale. At the same time, he understands the burden placed on property owners to protect and maintain them.
“Banksy’s works should be preserved, but for the community they were made for,” he said. “They should not be turned into goods. They are made and thought for a specific location. Not portable. Not sellable.”
Spokespersons for Banksy didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Difficult to determine price
Maria Georgiadis’ brother, Anastasios, said his father had also hoped to keep the piece in Red Hook after having cut it out of the wall and framed in thick steel for safekeeping.
The elder Georgiadis, he said, envisioned the work as the centerpiece of a retail and housing development on the property, a dream he didn’t realize. The property has since been sold off by the family.
Ettinger said it is difficult to say what the piece might fetch. There is little precedent for a sale of a Banksy piece of this size, he said.
In 2018, a canvas that was part of Banksy’s “Girl With Balloon” series sold in London for 1.04 million pounds ($1.4 million), only to famously self-destruct in front of a stunned auction crowd.
Maria Georgiadis said she hopes whoever buys the ”Broken Heart” finds the same beauty and meaning her father drew from the piece.
When Banksy painted it, the family business had been recovering from destructive floods caused by Hurricane Sandy the prior year. Georgiadis recalls her father had no idea who Banksy was but was moved by the simple image.
“My dad had it in his head that Banksy knew what we went through,” she said. “He goes, ‘Can you believe it Maria? It’s a heart.’”
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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.
