A Banksy mural is heading to auction early next year. The catch? The buyer must purchase the entire building upon which Well Hung Lover was painted by the anonymous street artist.
Banksy’s Well Hung Lover Heads to Auction
In 2006, Banksy painted Well Hung Lover on the side of a sexual health clinic in Bristol, England. It depicts a naked man hanging from an open window. Another man, dressed in a suit and standing next to a woman in underwear, looks out the window, seemingly unaware of his partner’s dangling lover. This Banksy mural is technically the United Kingdom’s first legal piece of street art after a survey by the Bristol City Council granted permission retrospectively. Well Hung Lover was defaced by a paintball gun in 2009, after which the City Council partially restored the mural. It was defaced again in 2018 with black spray paint.
The sexual health clinic has since relocated from the building with the Banksy mural. Now, Bristol real estate agent Hollis Morgan is auctioning the building—and, by extension, the mural—with a new 250-year lease next year. The Grade II-listed Georgian building has five floors and a nightclub that currently operates in its basement. The property is being promoted as a potential student apartment complex.
Banksy Mural “Cannot Be Removed” From Building
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterThe Grade II listing legally ensures that the property will be preserved by its owner. That means the owner is not authorized to remove and resell the Banksy mural, as it appears on one of the building’s external walls. “It is recognized that street art is created not as a permanent work of art but as a form of protest which is usually, but not always, created illegally and without the permission of the owner of the building,” Hollis Morgan told the Guardian. “As such, the life of any image as a work of art will evolve and change over time depending on how the work weathers or indeed is subsequently painted over or removed.”
Hollis Morgan also clarified that the “purchaser will be required to accept a restrictive covenant in the lease ensuring that the image cannot be removed from the building, however, the vendor will not require a positive obligation on the purchaser to maintain the artwork or insure it for as long as it shall remain visible and in place on the building.”
What Is Banksy Doing Now?
Banksy has grabbed many headlines in recent months. Back in August, the artist surprised the city of London with nine new street murals in nine successive days. Each depicted a different animal in a different location across the British capital. The series culminated at the London Zoo, where Banksy painted a gorilla setting animals free at the zoo entrance. In typical fashion, Banksy confirmed his authorship of the murals by posting about them on social media. Speculation abounded, especially in the artist’s Instagram comments, as to the intended meaning of the animals.
The Guardian later wrote that “recent theorizing about the deeper significance of each new image has been way too involved, Banksy’s support organization, Pest Control Office, has indicated” and that “the artist’s vision is simple: the latest street art has been designed to cheer up the public during a period when the news headlines have been bleak, and light has often been harder to spot than shade.”
