Urban Art Association

Demand for Urban Art, by Daniel Silk on Feb 14, 2008 10:22:04 GMT 1, www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aRRc9uaPcUjo&refer=uk

`Moona Lisa,' `Pop Tart' Stoke Buyer Demand for U.K. Street Art
By Scott Reyburn

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Street artists and their dealers have been inundated with inquiries following the record prices set this month at an ``Urban Art'' auction at Bonhams in London.

The 74-lot evening sale, which drew a crowd of more than 500 people on Feb. 5, raised about 1 million pounds ($1.9 million) with fees, compared with the low estimate of around 550,000 pounds. Only one lot failed to sell, and a Banksy picture of chimpanzees fetched 228,000 pounds, the highest sale price.

Lesser-known names fetching record prices included U.K. street artists Nick Walker and D*Face. Walker's ``Moona Lisa,'' a 2006 spray-paint-on-canvas of La Gioconda exposing her bottom, sold for 54,000 pounds, more than 10 times the upper estimate. D*Face's 2007 ``Pop Tart Collage'' went for 7,800 pounds, triple its upper estimate.

``It's been pretty crazy since the auction,'' said D*Face, who owns StolenSpace Gallery in East London and declines to reveal his real name. ``My New York dealer, Jonathan LeVine, had to take the phone off the hook because so many people were trying to buy my work at pre-auction prices.''

Jonathan LeVine Gallery spokeswoman Malena Seldin confirmed in a phone call that the dealer sold another example of D*Face's ``Pop Tart Collage'' for about $3,000 immediately after the auction. The gallery also sold four other D*Face prints for $7,000 apiece, she said.

``It's been absolutely mad,'' said Mike Snelle of East London art dealer Black Rat Press. ``We've had over 100 phone calls from people trying to buy Nick Walker, D*Face and Blek Le Rat at pre-auction prices.''

`Morning After'

Prior to the Bonhams auction, Black Rat Press had planned to offer 100 signed examples of a Walker screen print, ``The Morning After (Hollywood),'' for 300 pounds apiece in a first-come, first-serve sale at its East London gallery on Feb. 16.

Black Rat Press now plans to sell the print, which depicts a pinstripe-suited graffiti artist admiring the paint he has daubed over the Hollywood sign, through its Web site tomorrow, Snelle said. The price remains 300 pounds.

``Issuing these prints is like giving free money to people,'' Snelle said. ``If we'd sold the new Nick Walker in the gallery, the queue would have been so big it could have turned nasty.''

He has a point: A similar Walker print, ``The Morning After (London Version),'' fetched 5,400 pounds with fees at the Bonhams auction. Fifty other examples of ``The Morning After (Hollywood),'' priced at $650 each, sold out on the first night of a Walker show at the Carmichael Gallery of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, on Feb. 2, said Snelle.

Snelle and D*Face said they were reluctant to raise their prices following the Bonhams auction. ``The whole point of street art is that it should be affordable,'' Snelle said.

`Laugh Now'

The highest sale price at the auction went to Banksy's spray-paint-on-wood mural of chimpanzees carrying sandwich boards, ``Laugh Now.'' Banksy argues that auction houses shouldn't sell street art and insists that exhibitions of his works in ``proper'' art galleries have nothing to do with him.

``It's all stuff they bought previously. I only ever mount shows in warehouses and war zones,'' Banksy says on his Web site.

Andipa Gallery in London plans to hold its second selling exhibition of Banksy works on Feb. 29.

``Most of the 50 or so pieces in the show are owned by us,'' said gallery director Acoris Andipa. ``We've always made it clear that we are secondary dealers. But I can't buy an artist I don't like. I think Banksy's a genius.''

The exhibition will include the spray-painted mural, ``Bombing Middle England,'' priced at 300,000 pounds, and a spray-painted canvas, ``Happy Choppers,'' at 150,000 pounds.

``You can't stop the secondary market,'' said D*Face. ``You can't argue with it. Things just get sold.''

Besides, he added, the secondary market for street art can be a good thing.

``It gives power to the people,'' he said. ``I just don't want to sell things too cheap and then have them flipped the following day on EBay.''

(Scott Reyburn writes about the art market for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Scott Reyburn in London at sreyburn@hotmail.com .