Mr B: A wall worth more than anything I ever had
In the book I just put away there is a scene that is difficult to release. Two young guys, art students, have discovered a street painting on an empty plot in central London, on the wall against an MC deal. They decide to try to take it down, but have no idea how. Joe, a builder who helped the one’s mother to fix a little at home, be opened in the plan. It will not be easy, he says, the wall is uneven, the subject painted over the chimney – but if you do it in five parts it should probably go …
While standing there, a man from the shop enters the fate. With played calm, the guys suggest that they could remove the picture, yes, even pay a coin? But they are late.
The week before, a German was there and agreed with the owner.
The painting represents four eighties stuffy young people in cool poses, but with the faces of the elderly, a lady in curlers crouches behind a classic boombox, over her is the words « Old Skool » sprayed in pink and probably the picture is worth more than a middle manager at DN earns during a full working life (including 1600 Monday).
Banksy price trends have been explosive.
Almost as strange is that one of the two guys grows up to become one of history’s worst art winders – at least measured in money – while the other wrote the book I just put down. « All That Glitters » is a memoir about the world where works of art change owners for amounts that seem more suitable to operate hospitals.
As I read the book, I think about how different markets for visual arts and text art work. Anyone who wants to own a sensible work by Banksy or Artemisia Gententeschi needs parents in the oil industry – anyone who wants to own one of Knausgårds or Dante’s best needs 99 bucks.
I try to imagine A bookstore that works more as the art market. Already outside stands fully loaded wheelbarrows with unengaged self -help books and fast -written decks. « Just to take » it says on a sign. But if you have thought of something else, for example a gift for your urgent grandchild, you have to go to the cash register.
« Excuse me, do you have Virginia Woolfs ‘your own room’? »
« Sure, but do you have SEK 11 million? »
A couple of months later, when the prospective writer goes past the fate site, « Old Skool » is gone, instead its place is marked by a sprayed, dashed line with a scissors symbol. And in the middle, in capital letters, it says: « Collected ».
Read more
Last Mr. B-Kåsiet: So it went when Henrik Berggren locked us in on the toilet
Mr. B classic: Therefore, « The Adult in the Room » sounds like a horror movie (2018)
