Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus has announced that he is auctioning a rare Banksy painting, part of the enigmatic artist’s Crude Oil series, with a portion of the funds to benefit two Los Angeles medical charities and the California Fire Foundation.
The band’s co-founder and singer acquired the entirely hand-painted work with his wife, Skye, in 2011, and until recently displayed it at the family’s homes in London and Los Angeles. It is expected to fetch between £3 to £5m.
Hoppus’s love of art was inspired by an art history professor at his local college in California: “He loved art but wasn’t precious about it,” he recalled. “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.”
“Crude Oil (Vettriano)” was first exhibited in Banksy’s landmark 2005 exhibition Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin. It reimagines Scottish artist Jack Vettriano’s 1992 work The Singing Butler, already one of the most celebrated pictures in Britain.
Banksy chose to subvert Vettriano’s romantic narrative by incorporating themes of pollution, capitalism and the climate crisis, painting in a sinking oil liner and two men in hazmat suits wheeling a barrel of toxic waste along the beach – while the original couple dance as their butler holds a black umbrella over their heads.
It went on display in a disused shop on Westbourne Grove in Notting Hill, where it could be viewed by passersby. Other works in the exhibition included a wilted, bloomless version of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and “Show Me the Monet”, which added dumped shopping trolleys and a traffic cone to the French Impressionist painter’s iconic Japanese bridge scene.
“The vandalised paintings reflect life as it is now,” Banksy said of his exhibition. “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.”
Hoppus said that he and Skye fell in love with the painting from the first moment they saw it: “[It’s] unmistakably Banksy, but different. We bought it because we loved it,” he said. “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,” he continued.
“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.”
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As well as a portion of the proceeds going to charity in the wake of the devastating California fires, Hoppus and Skye plan to expand their art collection with works by younger generations of artists.
“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,” he said. “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.”
The auction, part of the Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Sale on 4 March, comes ahead of the release of Hoppus’s memoir, Fahrenheit-182, which is out 8 April via Little Brown Book Publishing.
