Banksy’s parody sketch of Demi Moore makes auction debut

 

Although the venue was kept a secret, advertisements featuring Moore's caricature against a clear, blue sky, along with the famous Hollywood sign, were pasted around the city hours before the exhibition

The exhibition featured in 2006, in Los Angeles' notorious and impoverished neighbourhood Skid Row, and the canvas was Banksy's breakthrough debut, which elevated his status. (Photo: Instagram/@sothebys)

Anonymous, Bristol-based street artist Banksy had made a parody sketch of actor Demi Moore’s iconic 1991 Vanity Fair cover shot by Annie Leibovitz, for his debut hit US exhibition titled ‘Barely Legal’. In it, the actor was heavily pregnant, cradling her baby bump. She was expecting her second child with her then husband Bruce Willis.

And now, auction house Sotheby’s has announced that the caricature will be offered at a London auction on March 25, with an estimated value between £2 million (INR 20 crore) and £3 million (INR 30 crore).

The exhibition featured in 2006, in Los Angeles’ notorious and impoverished neighbourhood Skid Row, and the canvas was Banksy’s breakthrough debut, which elevated his status — he was no longer just a graffiti artist. In an Instagram post, which featured the 78 inch-tall canvas, Sotheby’s wrote: “This is @banksy at his most outrageous: a very cheeky parody of Demi Moore’s iconic 1991 Vanity Fair cover shot by Annie Leibovitz🤰Wearing the artist’s characteristic monkey-mask, his most often-used disguise and among his most widely recurring motifs, the canvas was the ultimate tongue-in-cheek emblem for his debut hit U.S. exhibition, ‘Barely Legal’.”

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“Staged in #LA in 2006, the show skirted the boundary between good and bad taste, and brimmed with dark-humoured works, which all challenged issues of global injustice and poverty in contemporary society.”

According to a Barron’s report, although the venue was kept a secret hours before the exhibition, advertisements featuring Moore’s caricature against a clear, blue sky, along with the famous Hollywood sign, were pasted around the city.

The outlet also mentioned that the three-day exhibition drew more than 30,000 visitors, and among them were actors Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jude Law, Keanu Reeves, Orlando Bloom, Dennis Hopper, Cameron Diaz, and Sacha Baron Cohen.