Banksy shocks art world by shredding £1 million work at auction

British street artist Banksy has stunned the art world with arguably his most audacious prank yet, self-destructing one of his best-known works moments after it fetched more than a million pounds at auction in London. “Girl with Balloon” had just sold at Sotheby’s Friday for £1,042,000 ($1.4 million, 1.2 million euros) — a joint record for the maverick artist — when it unexpectedly passed through a shredder hidden in the frame. Banksy posted a video Saturday on his Instagram page accompanied by a quote attributed to Pablo Picasso — “the urge to destroy is also a creative urge” — showing the stunt unfolding and how he pulled it off. “A few years ago I secretly built a shredder into a painting, in case it was ever put up for auction,” read captions displayed over footage of a man crafting the device into a faux-gilt frame. The video later shows scenes from Sotheby’s, where onlookers are left aghast