If we look beyond street art, Banksy isn’t any different from other artists; he produces art in his studio and sells it to his collector base. Banksy began selling his studio work in the late 1990s, and he demonstrated surprising business acumen right from the beginning.
Artists and curators tend not to bother themselves with business or money. This is especially true for the street art movement: a large part of it was a reaction to the traditional art world, where fine art had become an investment opportunity for the rich rather than art for the people. However, even subversive street artists need to eat. Team Banksy requires funds not only for survival but also to finance ambitious projects such as Dismaland and the Walled Off Hotel. And don’t forget that a lot of money goes into different charities, such as Love Welcomes and the rescue boat M.V. Louise Michel.
Basic concepts
First, let’s explore some fundamental concepts related to the business side of art. I apologise for being overly pedagogic in this section:
- The primary market is when the artist sells new art directly to the market (his collector base). An artist could do this online, at a selling exhibition, or in the studio for a visiting collector.
- The secondary market is when collectors buy and sell pieces among themselves, through auction houses, galleries, art dealers, or direct sales between collectors.
Primary market: Banksy’s first official selling exhibition was Severnshed in Bristol in February 2000. In the following years, he did a few smaller selling exhibitions around Europe and one in Los Angeles until his first big selling exhibition in London, Turf War, in July 2003. Since then, all his art shows have been selling exhibitions, meaning that all the displayed pieces have been for sale for the right money, except for Better Out Than In, in New York, 2013. Another sales channel is the Pest Control Office website, https://pestcontroloffice.com/faq.asp. He also sells originals directly from his studio to a small group of VIP collectors. They need to sign a 3-year non-resell agreement (NRA).
Secondary market: There is a very dynamic secondary market in London, with hundreds of galleries and art dealers offering Banksy artwork. Of particular interest and a big part of the secondary market are the major auction houses—Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Bonhams, and Phillips—all with salesrooms in the three major art markets: London, New York, and Hong Kong. Private collectors buy and sell approximately 500 Banksy studio pieces — most of them screen prints — at auctions each year. It is not Banksy selling these pieces; it is always a private collector who puts up the artworks for sale at the auctions.
Banksy’s market
He made the leap from street art to selling studio pieces and prints in a groundbreaking way. Keith Haring and Basquiat had done it before him. Shepard Fairey made the transition at the same time, but Banksy did it differently:
- Cutting out the gallery. He started selling screenprints and originals on his website.
- He set up a certification service early on with fake-proof Certificates of Authenticity (COAs), almost eliminating counterfeits, thus creating a trustworthy system for his growing collector base.
Screenprints, multiples, and unique pieces
Banksy’s studio pieces can be categorised into screen prints, multiples, and unique pieces. There is also a market for his street art, but the Pest Control Office doesn’t issue COAs for it.
Screenprints: The prints have been an essential part of Banksy’s “oeuvre.” The first regular print release was “Rude Copper” in 2002. Since then, 53 motives have been used for making prints.
In 2003, Banksy and a group of colleagues from the street-art world set up Pictures of Walls. The purpose was to produce screen prints and provide affordable art for a broad public.
Screen-printing works the same way as stencils: the colour is applied to the sheet of paper or canvas through acetate screens, one colour per screen. Unlike lithography and other printing methods, the motive ends up positive. Making multicoloured screen prints is a very sophisticated operation; it requires craftsmanship and time. One can say that every print is unique in the sense that there will always be small differences within an edition of, say, 150 prints. In charge of the POW printing operation was Ben Eine, an artist in his own right and one of the pillars of Team Banksy.
Banksy has screen-printed 53 different motives. Some of the motives have been printed in multiple colourways, bringing the total to approximately 124. The editions are short, typically 150 prints for each motive. The total count, including all the motives, is approximately 30,000, of which approximately 9,000 are signed and approximately 21,000 are unsigned—as authentic as the signed if they carry a COA. It sounds like a lot of prints, but it’s nothing compared to Warhol, Shepard, Picasso, or any of his peers; all of them have printed thousands of motives in large editions. And without any certification system.
The relatively small number of Banksy prints, along with the fake-proof authentication system, has created a dynamic market where some of the most coveted prints sell for well over £50,000 on the secondary market. When Banksy released the same print in the early 2000s, it most likely sold for less than £50.
Multiples: Multiples are editions of canvases or sculptures. A typical editioned canvas is the Heavy Weaponry canvas from an edition of 25 identically stencilled elephants on a grey background. There are approximately 40 different motives made as multiple canvases, among them some versions of Love is in the Air or Girl with Balloon. The typical dimension of an editioned canvas is 40 x 40 cm.
Unique Pieces: Unique pieces or authentic originals. It means there is only one of them. The unique oils on canvas are the most coveted pieces among collectors, and almost all sell for well over £1 million at auction. One reasonable estimate is at least 800 unique pieces with COA in the Banksy catalogue—not all of them canvases, but some stencilled motifs on other materials such as board, metal, or cardboard.
Pest Control Office
In 2008, Banksy left POW and set up his own company, Pest Control Office, which acts as a handling agent and certification service for his studio pieces and screen prints. Pest Control Office has been a pioneer in the art world, implementing a fake-proof system that is based on two pillars:
- Every piece of Banksy studio art (print, multiple, or unique) has a Certificate of Authenticity (COA), and
- An ownership registration service administered by Pest Control Office.
This system has practically eradicated the possibility of selling fake or stolen Banksy studio pieces to an informed buyer.
Banksy hasn’t yet produced a catalogue raisonné—a complete list of all his studio work. Living artists often compile this list over specific time periods. Collectors can only speculate about the number of versions available for a particular motive. For example, the motive “Love is in the Air” (a.k.a. the Flower Thrower) exists as a stencilled motive on various media (canvas, board, and cardboard) in multiple formats and editions, some of the versions with a hand-finished touch, making it impossible to say how many “Love is in the Air” there are. Most likely, the grand total would be somewhere between 50 and 100. This figure does not include the “Love is in the Air” screen print.
One can estimate that there are approximately 2,500 studio pieces in different media—canvases, boards, multiple canvases, cardboard, metal, wood, sculptures, and installations—of which approximately 800 are authentic originals, labelled “unique in its format” on the certificates. On top of that, we have approximately 30,000 screen prints, making the total sellable pieces with COA approximately 32,500.
Who decides the price of art?
When you buy a Banksy artwork, you are not only purchasing a piece of canvas or paper with some paint on it that creates a certain aesthetic experience; you are also buying a piece of an enormous narrative, unprecedented in the art world. The price of Banksy’s studio work depends on how the public at large, the art world in particular, and most importantly, his own collector base, react to that narrative.
Banksy’s studio work—prints, canvases, or sculptures—is priced according to the market, i.e., determined by demand and supply, like any other blue-chip artist.
There are three pricing models for art:
- The conventional model is that the artist’s gallery decides the price of the canvases in an exhibition. The gallery and the artist usually split the money 50/50. Banksy has never been represented by a gallery. However, a small number of galleries in London specialise in dealing with Banksy’s studio art on the secondary market.
- Another model is that tax-funded art museums purchase artwork for their permanent collections. A committee oversees this purchasing process, often influenced by current political trends. So far, no known publicly funded museum has invested in Banksy for its permanent collections. Which is strange and worth some thoughts about how publicly funded museums spend our tax money. Anyway, neither of these two models is truly exposed to the free-market mechanism of supply and demand, which brings us to the third model.
- Art exposed to market forces at the auctions. The basic rule for market-priced art is that if the collector base grows, prices rise, and vice versa. Only a fraction of living artists will ever have their pieces sold at the big auction houses. Public showings before a major exhibition at Sotheby’s or Phillips are often worth a visit.
One can say a lot about the auction houses, but they do serve an essential purpose: they expose the real propensity to spend hard-earned money on works of art; they tell us which artists and which works are in demand among art-interested private collectors. Thus, the prices set at the auctions determine the price level for Banksy pieces worldwide, as well as the price level on his primary market, i.e., when he sells newly produced artwork from his studio directly to his VIP collector group. If prices on the auction houses go up, he can charge more to his primary market. Several online services provide updated pricing based on the latest auction results. One of these services is http://www.banksy-value.com, which is highly appreciated among collectors and dealers.
Banksy unofficial 