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

The art world descended on London this week for the Frieze Art Fair, with over 160 top international galleries making their pitch to dealers, artists and assorted eccentrics. Alongside the US and European powerhouses are scores of galleries from outside the traditional hubs of the industry, flexing their increasing muscle on the world stage. “The presence of non-western art is very strongly felt across the fair,” Shanay Jhaveri, a curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, told AFP on Thursday. “There is a gradual shift that is taking place, there is growing integration of non-western work.” The event at Regent’s Park in London comprises the main Frieze, which focuses on contemporary works, Frieze Masters, which showcases more traditional art, and Frieze Sculpture — with over 1,000 artists on display in total. The event attracts dealers looking for the

The McNay Art Museum presents Pop América, 1965–1975, a groundbreaking, expansive approach to international Pop art. Co-organized by the McNay and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, this pioneering exhibition crosses American borders and positions artists from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico alongside U.S. Pop art icons such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Pop América opens to the public on October 4, 2018, and is on view through January 13, 2019. “The McNay is deeply honored to partner with the Nasher Museum on this inclusive—and historically accurate—account of Pan-American Pop art,” said Richard Aste, McNay Director. “The Museum is committed to expanding the canon of modern art history by making room for those voices (here, Latin American voices) who were always there but consistently overlooked by U.S.-focused scholars and museum professionals. San