LONDON.- A rare, entirely hand-painted work by Banksy is set to headline Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction on 4 March in London, with an estimate of £3-5 million. Crude Oil (Vettriano) comes to the market from the collection of Mark Hoppus, the vocalist, bassist and founding member of American pop-punk band blink-182.

Acquired by Mark and Skye, his wife, in 2011, the painting will go on public view at Sotheby’s New York today through to 20 February, before heading to London for Sotheby’s preview exhibition from the 26 February through to 4 March. Emerging from the skate punk scene in Southern California in the 1990s, blink-182 gained fans and notoriety with their irreverent humour, scalding the music scene just as Banksy scalded the art world. Both band and artist have since cemented their enduring cultural relevance: blink-182 becoming one of the biggest bands of their generation and Banksy becoming one of the most decisive social commentators of all time.

We loved this painting since the moment we saw it. Unmistakably Banksy, but different. We bought it because we loved it. It’s borne witness to our family over these past dozen years. It hung over the table in London where we ate breakfast and our son did his homework. It hung in our living room in Los Angeles. It’s seen laughter and tears and parties and arguments. Our son has grown up in front of it. This painting has meant so much to us and been such an amazing part of our lives, and now I’m excited for it to be out there in the world, seen by as many as possible. Go get ‘em. Godspeed. --MARK HOPPUS

Mark and Skye plan to use part of the proceeds raised from the sale to expand their art collection, specifically focussing on works by the younger generation of artists. Mark explained: “Coming back to punk rock, one aspect of the community I always hold dear is, if you get lucky enough to gain success, you bring your friends with you. Larger bands bring smaller bands on tour. We support one another from within. I want to take some of the money from the sale of this painting and use it to buy works from younger, upcoming artists. We were lucky enough to find ‘Crude Oil (Vettriano)’ in our lives, and it’ll help us support more art and artists. I want to be a f***ing Medici.” In addition, a portion of the funds will benefit two charities dear to Mark and his family’s hearts: Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and their Child Life Program, and Cedars Sinai Haematology Oncology Research. In light of the recent devastation in their home city of Los Angeles, they will also use some of the proceeds to continue their donations to the California Fire Foundation.

Crude Oil (Vettriano) comes to auction at a reflective moment for Mark, as this spring, he will publish his memoir Fahrenheit-182, in which he paints a vivid picture of how he came of age, formed blink-182 and fought a series of personal battles.

“FEELING THIS”

Mark Hoppus’ love of art was ignited by an inspirational art history professor at his local college in California. In his words: “He loved art but wasn’t precious about it. Art was for everyone. And everyone should love it. And because he loved it, and showed us how to think about it, I loved it. It opened my mind. It was Good Will Hunting but with paintings and architecture instead of poetry.”

A stop-off with a friend at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles provided the moment when skateboarding, punk rock and art all came together, when they entered a room displaying street art. The same spirit uniting the long tradition of visual art in skateboarding, the ‘make it yourself’ ethos of punk rock and graffiti, struck a chord with Mark: “That’s the moment it all came together for me. Skateboarding, punk rock, and art. Street art… The left out and overlooked making their own reality. Just make it yourself. F**k everybody else. Just go make art. It’s the same spirit.”

Before leaving LA in 2011 to move to London with Skye and their son, Mark went with his family to a graffiti exhibition, “Art in the Streets” at MOCA where a Banksy installation stopped them dead in their tracks.

Then, finding themselves at an art opening in their new home city soon after relocating, they came across Banksy’s Crude Oil (Vettriano), and it was love at first sight.

Though they had not visited in person, Mark and Skye were fully aware of Banksy’s debut and breakthrough U.S. exhibition in 2006,‘Barely Legal’, the self-proclaimed “three-day vandalised warehouse extravaganza” that took place in an impoverished area of Los Angeles, Skid Row. During the view, the exhibition caused a media sensation with its anti-establishment tone and famously drew 30,000 visitors – among them Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who reportedly walked away with the most coveted pieces, as well as Jude Law, Keanu Reeves, Orlando Bloom, Dennis Hopper, Cameron Diaz and Sacha Baron Cohen – with queues at one point reportedly stretching a mile long. Mark also recalls the stir created by Banksy’s installation at the very centre of the exhibition involving Tai, a 37-year-old Indian elephant hand painted to match the artificial bourgeois interior and replete with an official artist statement which opened with “There’s an elephant in the room…”

CRUDE OIL (VETTRIANO)

In the twenty years since Crude Oil (Vettriano) was first exhibited in Banksy’s landmark 2005 exhibition Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin, Banksy has surpassed his standing as the most famous graffiti artist of his generation to become one of the most popular artists in the world.

The painting is Banksy’s re-imagining of Jack Vettriano’s career-defining The Singing Butler from 1992, which had not only become an iconic image in the western art canon, but also one of the most celebrated pictures in Britain – having sold at Sotheby’s in 2004 for £744,800 - establishing the highest price for any Scottish painting sold at auction at the time and catapulting Vettriano into the financial stratosphere of living contemporary artists.

The image of a couple dancing on a windswept beach with an attendant butler serenading them had become Britain’s most popular art poster, outselling Monet and Van Gogh. Despite the artist’s enthusiastic reception by “ordinary” people, Vettriano was shunned by the art world elite, a disconnect that struck a nerve with Banksy, who had also long been criticised by the art establishment.

Subverting the original work’s romantic narrative, Banksy used his trademark humour and irony to produce an image that tackles pressing issues of the 21st century – such as the environment, pollution and the capitalist landscape – inserting a sinking oil liner and two men in hazmat suits wheeling a barrel of toxic waste. In fact, the painting feels more relevant today than ever before given the increasing frequency of natural disasters, most recently, the devastating wildfires which ravaged Los Angeles.

For his first conventional gallery exhibition in 2005 – now regarded as a milestone in the artist’s career – Banksy took canonical works of art as the inspiration for a series of fully painted ‘remixes’. Crude Oil (Vettriano) was hung in a disused shop on Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill where it was on prominent view to passers-by in the street. Its prime position set the tone for the exhibition, which included three other paintings: a wilted, bloomless version of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers; a take on Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks in which a topless Union Jack boxer-wearing yob has smashed the late-night bar’s glass window; and Show Me the Monet, a satirical riff on Claude Monet’s view of the Japanese footbridge in his water garden at Giverny.** In all of these hijacked traditional oil paintings, Banksy powerfully tackles relevant issues and formulates sharp social commentaries through one recognisable image – but with a twist. By also featuring Vettriano alongside Van Gogh and Monet in his debut exhibition, staged in a more traditional setting, when cultural institutions would not remotely entertain the thought of hanging the Scottish artist’s canvases on their walls, Banksy questions the rigidity of the art world and its taste makers.

In his glowing review of the Crude Oils show, the Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Januszczak described Banksy as “an old-fashioned moralist, moaning about the ruination of Britain’s ancient textures”, whose “borrowings from other artists give them instant familiarity”.

Banksy himself explained: “The vandalised paintings reflect life as it is now. We don’t live in a world like Constable’s Haywain anymore and, if you do, there is probably a travellers’ camp on the other side of the hill. The real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business… exactly the people who put gold-framed pictures of landscapes on their walls and try to tell the rest of us how to behave.”

Sotheby’s holds seven out of the top 10 auction results for Banksy, including the record price achieved by Girl Without Balloon which sold for £18.6m ($25.4m) in October 2021 – three years after the painting, then titled Girl with Balloon, famously shredded in Sotheby’s London saleroom seconds after the hammer fell to become the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.


1 Waldemar Januszczak, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Guy?", The Sunday Times, 23 October 2005, p.9