Banksy’s Show Me the Monet to go on sale next month

Auction house Sotheby’s on Friday announced it would offer British street artist Banksy’s well-known tribute to Claude Monet for an estimated £3-5 million at a live-stream auction next month.

Auction house Sotheby’s on Friday announced it would offer British street artist Banksy’s well-known tribute to Claude Monet for an estimated £3-5 million at a live-stream auction next month.

Artwork entitled "Show me the Monet" by the artist Banksy, is pictured during a photocall at Sotheby's auction house in London, ahead of the forthcoming 'Modernites/Contemporary' evening auction set to take place in October.(AFP)

The anonymous artist’s 2005 painting, Show Me the Monet, is a satirical variation of the legendary French painter Monet’s 1899 masterpiece, Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies.

In his signature style, Banksy has converted the impressionist artwork into a commentary on modern times by artfully introducing in the painting discarded supermarket trolleys and a traffic cone floating under the arched bridge. “Banksy shines a light on society’s disregard for the environment in favour of consumerism,” Sotheby’s said on its Instagram account.

The painting will be auctioned for an estimated £3-5 million on October 21 in London, according to the auction house’s website. It is a part of The Contemporary Art Evening Auction, which is set to “bring together works by some of the most engaging artists of the 20th and 21st centuries” through a live-stream auction event.

Show Me the Monet was first displayed 15 years ago as part of Banksy’s gallery exhibition titled Crude Oil: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin. The series was a remix of masterpieces, including Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, where Banksy’s version showed wilted flowers in a vase, and Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, whose subject Banksy replaced with superstar model Kate Moss. The maverick exhibition also included 200 rats that roamed freely at the venue.

Sotheby’s hailed the influential graffiti artist on its website, observing that Banksy’s work is marked by “dark humour, satire and political commentary” and has turned him into a “mainstream phenomenon”.

In 2010, Banksy had made it to the Time magazine list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Last year, Banksy’s 2009 artwork Devolved Parliament, which mocked the British House of Commons by depicting it as an assembly of chimpanzees, had sold for a staggering £9.9 million - a record for the elusive artist.