Banksy Mural ‘Valentine’s Day Mascara’ for Sale

Banksy Mural ‘Valentine’s Day Mascara’ is up for sale. Members of the public will get a chance to hold a piece of this street masterpiece, and with only $153 per share. Street artists works with the London-based Red Eight Galleries on sale. The gallery is intermediating in a deal between a homeowner of the object on which the mural resists, and the Showpiece, a fractional ownership platform.

The mural can be found in the British city of Margate. Robin Barton of Bankrobber Gallery worked on evaluating art installation’s value, and determined it is almost eight million dollars worth. The piepce-by-piece sale will take place on August 22 with a total of 27,000 shares. “Realistically, we are looking to achieve between £1m and £1.5m”, Usher told the Art Newspaper, which first reported the news of the sale.

His mural shows 1950s housewife. She has a beaten eye, and is missing a tooth. The mysterious artists’ main female figure is standing next to an exposed chest freezer. Also, next to an upright plastic chair. She closed the man inside the fridge. With this illustration, he wanted to show a different side of this holiday – abusive side and abusive male partner.

The gallery previously mentioned removed the freezer and placed a sheet of plastic over the mural, in order to shield the mural’s paint. Everything is done with homeowners consent. First, local officials (Thanet district council) removed a few pieces, calling for safety reasons. After, they removed a freezer, a chair, blue crate and an empty beer bottle. But, the council quickly returned all taken pieces.

Why Not Auction House, but Private Sale?

The gallery representative, CEO Julian Usher, also said the installation of Plexiglas and the removal of the chest freezer were both for security reasons, citing the high cost of guards to protect it around the clock. While Banksy confirmed the work was genuine on Instagram, Usher said the mural had not been authenticated by the artist’s studio Pest Control.

“The lack of authentication means we can’t take it to an auction house”,  he said. “There is a grey secondary market for these pieces, but in the current financial market, those people are just not there”. Historically, Banksy and Pest Control do not condone the sale of any work taken out of its original context, with only a few exceptions.

Some of the proceeds of the sales the fractional ownership shares will go to the very cause depicted in Valentine’s Day Mascara. Showpiece agreed to donate some of the proceeds to the UK domestic violence charity Refuge. The owner of the mural also pledged a six-figure sum to Oasis. This is a charity in Margate which supports families seeking to leave and recover from domestic abuse.