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Anonymous street artist Banksy's shredded artwork Love is in the Bin' sold for a record 25.4 million dollars at famed auction house Sotheby's.

Nearly three years before Love is in the Bin was sold, Banksy's original artwork ‘Girl With Balloon’ sold for a record 1.4 million dollars. When it was sold, the artwork immediately self-destructed as a shredder inside the frame activated and sliced the bottom half of the picture. Banksy claimed responsibility for the event and stated that the entire artwork was to be shredded, but the shredder malfunctioned. Thus, he gave his artwork a new name Love is in the Bin.

Banksy himself confirmed as much in an Instagram post where he stated plainly that the piece really was shredded and that the auction house was not "in on it."

After Sotheby's announced that "Love is in the Bin" would soon be up for sale, the piece was taken on a brief global tour before returning home to London. The auction house estimated then that it would go for $5 million to $8 million, a pretty substantial return for a piece of art that was purchased for only a fraction of that price.

Picture Credit : Google

Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France was wrapped in lustrous fabric from September 18 to October 3, as part of a posthumous installation by Bulgarian-born artist Christo and French artist Jeanne-Claude. The monument was covered in 25.000 sq metres of silvery blue fabric and 3,000m of red rope, costing nearly 14 million pounds. Christo Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude were known for their larger-than-life installations where they wrapped many famous monuments and places. The temporary artwork was titled L'Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped and was completed on Christo's request.

The project was initially slated for April 2020 but was delayed, first to accommodate the kestrel falcons who nested in the monument and then because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Work began in mid-July, and the full installation will be on view from September 18 to October 3. It’s fitting Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s first posthumous project is being staged in the City of Lights, where the pair met in the 1950s and where they staged their first “public intervention”: In 1962’s Wall of Oil Barrels - The Iron Curtain the pair blocked off a narrow street in the 6th arrondissement with 89 oil drums as a protest against the then-new Berlin Wall.

The first public building they wrapped was the Kunsthalle art museum in Bern, Switzerland, in 1968, followed in 1969 by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. That same year Christo and Jeanne-Claude shrouded a 1.5-mile stretch of Sydney’s Little Bay in a million square feet of plastic fabric. In the decades that followed they draped Paris’ Pont Neuf bridge, the Reichstag building in Berlin, a section of Rome’s Aurelian Walls, King's Beach in Newport, Rhode Island, and other locations.

The idea for covering the Arc de Triomphe predates all those works, though—Christo first sketched it out in 1961, when he lived nearby in a rundown apartment—but it wasn’t formally proposed until 2017, eight years after Jeanne-Claude’s death and three years before Christo’s.

Credit : Architectural Digest

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The oldest known animal cave painting was discovered in Indonesia in the Leang Tedongnge cave in a valley in Sulawesi. The painting is that of a Sulawesi wild pig and is thought to have been painted about 45,000 years ago. Maxime Aubert, a dating specialist, identified a calcite deposit formed over the painting and used Uranium-series isotope dating to determine the age of the painting. The painting provides the earliest evidence of human settlement in the region.

The researchers noted that the Sulawesi warty pig painting, dated to at least 45,500 years ago, is part of a rock art panel located above a high ledge along the rear wall of Leang Tedongnge.

“It shows a pig with a short crest of upright hairs and a pair of horn-like facial warts in front of the eyes, a characteristic feature of adult male Sulawesi warty pigs,” Mr. Brumm said.

“Painted using red ochre pigment, the pig appears to be observing a fight or social interaction between two other warty pigs,” he added.

The previously oldest dated rock art ‘scene’ at least 43,900 years old, was a depiction of hybrid human-animal beings hunting Sulawesi warty pigs and dwarf bovids.

It was discovered by the same research team at a nearby limestone cave site.

Credit : The Hindu

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Tanzanian author and retired British academic Abdulrazak Gurnah won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2021. A Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent, Canterbury Gurnah was awarded the prize for his work on exploring the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee. Gurnah has written 10 novels and several short stories.

His most famous novel is Paradise , which was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994

"Gurnah consciously breaks with convention, upending the colonial perspective to highlight that of the indigenous populations. Thus, his novel Desertion (2005) about a love affair becomes a blunt contradiction to what he has called “the imperial romance,” the Nobel Prize added.

The twitter page also shared a recording of a near six-minute telephone interview with the writer. "I was just watching the announcement here on my computer. Who are you please?" Gurnah asks as an official from the Nobel Prize speaks. When the person later introduces himself and asks how he feels, Gurnah, sounding calm and composed, says, "I am still settling in, man. This is such a big prize."

Gurnah becomes the first Tanzanian writer to win the Nobel Prize.

Credit : Business Line

Picture Credit : Google