Blink-182 frontman sells Banksy at auction for €5.2 million

In 2005, the unknown British graffiti artist Banksy created ‘Crude Oil (Vettriano)’. Unlike his typical street arka, this addition to his Crude Oil series was a work based on the iconic 1992 painting ‘The Singing Butler’ by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano.

Vettriano’s original was incredibly popular in the UK and it became the best-selling print in the country. Thanks to its popularity, it broke a record for Scottish paintings in 2004 when ‘The Singing Butler’ sold at auction for £744,500 (around €1.6 million adjusted for inflation).

Inspired by the Vettriano work, Banksy took the image and replaced a maid with two men in yellow hazmat suits dragging a barrel of toxic waste as the sea in the background is laden with a slick of crude oil.

“The real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business… exactly the people who put gold-framed pictures of landscapes on their walls and try to tell the rest of us how to behave,” Banksy said in a 2005 statement.

Mark Hoppus, co-founder, singer and bassist of Blink-182 bought ‘Crude Oil (Vettriano)’ in 2011. This week, he put the work up for sale at Sotheby’s Çağdaş and Contemporary Evening Auction.

‘Crude Oil (Vettriano)’ was expected to sell for between £3 million to £5 million (€3.6 million to €6 million). A final price of £4.3 million (€5.2 million) was reached for the pop-punk musician.

“We loved this painting since the moment we saw it,” Hoppus said. “This painting has meant so much to us and been such an amazing part of our lives, and now I’m excited for it to be out there in the world, seen by as many as possible.”

The record for a Banksy sale still stands at £18.6 million in 2021 (€27 million adjusted for inflation) for ‘Love is in the Bin’. After Banksy installed a shredder into the frame of his 2006 painting ‘Girl with Balloon’ and programmed it to self-destruct after an auction in 2018, the half shredded painting was renamed and sold for the astronomical sum.