UPDATE: Before Banksy came along, a man had been living in the tank for 7 years.
Melrose and Fairfax, and LA-based street art blog, has been following the Banksy drama in LA very closely (check out these posts – although that last one is basically a forum user pulling claims out of thin air which may or may not be true M&F points out that The LA Weekly has backed up some of the claims in that last post, which seems a lot more reliable to me), so of course, they were the first to discover that the above Banksy, recently painted on an old water tank as part of Banksy’s pre-Oscars campaign in LA, is for sale. Banksyelephant.com is attempting to sell the tank. While the site claims that the owners “personally acquired ownership to preserve and protect the work of Banksy in hopes that it will end up exhibited in a respected museum where his work will live on without harm,” I think it’s safe to say that money was a bit of a motivator too. Of course, Elephant will never get Pest Control certification (they do not certify street pieces) and without that, the value of a work by Banksy drops dramatically.
Historically, the water tank has been a bit of an eyesore that residents have tried to get rid of, but the owner would not remove. Melrose and Fairfax wonders if maybe Banksy was aware of that history and painted it knowing that the owner would finally remove the tank in order to try to sell or protect it.
Photo from Banksy’s website