Urban Art Association

Wearology yes not saying that people from Europe will not sue in America. But again you are looking a a bit of a different price range and situation.

Hence saying it old change if becomes an issue but again the PC system is also with Banksy alive. So much of the controversy and heresay that is a problem with Warhol and BasqUait is not there as he can say especially on the orig pieces. Yes I did it or no I did not. Where as with W & B some one is trying to workout if true or not but cannot ever be 100% as we're not there. Where as with all Banksy originals he was there as it were.

Coach fair point but I think your daft not to!!! Could very well bite you on the bum one day and also as more become available I cannot see the price going down!!!
So think you should get regardless of selling as it could change one way or another.

Do not think the W & B situ is the same at the moment. But...... Think it may well happen long term and if Mr b snuffed it. As I remember you have at least one orig /ed --- trust it has ..... If not you are bonkers ;D so with Wearology in the long term but not in the short term

You've all got me worried now!
It has been niggling me for a while.

Let's not get in a tizzy now.

If POW sends out prints without COAs people might as well buy the fake ones of ebay.
All the old prints without COA specially the unsigned ones will be worthless.
If they do stop certifying prints the COAs that are out there are also not worth the paper they are written on as you can't call PC to verify the print ... and if that happens people might want their money back that they paid for the COA.
The issues with the above headlines are I hope don't apply to POW/PC. PC started to take care of those kind of problems - fake prints - back door prints etc.


My point is I think it will be very unlikely that they stop writing COAs.

Fred If I items are on the stolen register not strange that they do not authenticate them. Surely they report to police and the real owner.

Never heard of a case of them not authenticating because they did not like someone but then I probably wouldn't.

They only do gifts once and the gift owner (person given gift) can apply. So people could have a real print of canvas that was a gift but passed on then this will not be authenticated.

I am glad this topic was able to stimulate some thought. I am still not convinced that Pest Control will continue to authenticate Banksy's art work in the future if all these law suites are allowed to continue to take place and especially if the plaintiffs start to win their cases. If The Basquiat Committee, The Warhol Foundation as well as other authentication bodies keep on getting sued for millions of dollars maybe it will become more a financial risk for PC and the Haring Foundation to justify not having such financial exposure.

First off, I really believe that official authentication bodies should be free (and they usually are). Ok, it takes time to authenticate but it should be a service rendered that is in favour of everyone involved (insuring market values, cataloguing works & ownership........).

I as well think that PC has a few more brighter days to come due to 2 reasons : price & volume. Banksy's volume and/or price isn't high enough to ensure lawsuits. People start making lawsuits when there is a lot of money involved (and where the volume is important enough that authentication bodies can act unethically enough). I'm not saying that Banksy is a cheap artist, I'm just saying that it's still cheap compared to a lot of contemporary/modern artist. When his OGs start to sell publicly for more than $2 million then some issues might arise.

I still think that some PC practices are borderline. As far as I know, they never authenticated street pieces (normal), gifts or backdoor prints. Backdoor prints I call printer's proof & Gifts I call Hors Commerce Editions.. The aspect that an artwork is only authentic when sold through the proper channel is IMO out of order.

I do not agree with Otomi though. It doesn't mean that if PC stops authenticating work that prints won't have any value. A lot of artists don't have authenticating bodies or do not authenticate prints (or signature). Example : The Warhol Foundation never authenticated any signature. Even for signed prints they only valid that the artwork was made according to Warhol processes by Warhol. The lichtenstein foundation doesn't do anything with prints. The point I'm making is : it's not because there is no PC, that there is no knowledge about Banksy's work (that's what art expert, historians & specialists are for after all).


After all, an authentication body is just about giving someone an authority around the question of authentication.

I will also add that people give way too much importance to COAs (and/or provenance). Both don't insure you of authenticity. They actually try to give some more confidence.

Brushstrokes there is more than enough financial incentive for lawyers to do their thing. This is a list of the top ten most expensive Banksy's sold at auction. I am sure some people have paid more in the underground secondary market. As you can see 2 of the top ten have sold for more than a million dollars !!!
10) Portobello Road mural - £208,100
9) Laugh Now - £228,000
8) Ruined Landscape - $385,000
7) Insane Clown - £241,250
6) Queen Victoria - £277,250
5) Space Girl and Bird - £288,000
4) The Rude Lord - £322,900
3) Vandalised Phone Box - $605,000
2) Simple Intelligence Testing - £636,500
1) Keep It Spotless - $1.87 million

I agree with you Sal on this. Also unlike the W & B cases almost all would be easily solved if you asked the artist. Difference being you can't. With Banksy you can. As mentioned this would change if he was dead. Similarly over say a 10 year period the prices might change as well

I'm not saying they wont have any value but the value will drop significantly. PC doesn't care about the fake prints being sold on ebay and that already hurts the value of unsigned prints. I don't think many artists are being copied that blatantly. Who is going to pay large amounts of money for a print that you can't authenticate while you can easily buy a fake one for a few bucks.

My point is giving a blindless power to a body that has incentive to abuse it might not be best for everyone.

It's like allowing anyone to buy a gun and asking why they shot when someone pulled the trigger.....

Then in truth it had been authenticated, albeit in an obscure way

All of the foundations that you've mentioned are for artists who have been dead for decades where most of the work has been cataloged (in Jean Michel's case they are saying 99%+). I would be stunned to see any major change of the sort suggested here with PC while he is still producing art. The Warhol one was a bit curious but I can appreciate not wishing to use that percentage of the foundations assets in court and the artwork isn't going to suffer in price. History has shown that foundations become a lot less willing to authenticate work once a catalog raisonne has been published.

My point wasn't that they should authenticate stuff on the Stolen Art Register, this is an example where PC do not authenticate genuine items by Banksy. My point overall point is that PC do pick and choose to a small extent, what they want to verify as a genuine work by Banksy. I know this first hand - I even had Banksy write to me convincing me that something that belonged to him, belonged to his 'mate'.