Paris (AFP)

From a canvas lacerated during an auction, to an intervention on the coronavirus or the death of George Floyd, Banksy is a master in the art of making the news: the discovery in Italy of a tribute to the victims of the attacks from Paris in 2015, stolen last year, adds yet another chapter to the enigmatic history of the British artist.

Since 2003, the most famous living street artist in the world has kept the contemporary art circles in suspense with its provocative causes, from migrants to Palestinians, from opposition to Brexit to denouncing the Islamists.

In recent weeks, he has left a work, "Game Changer", in homage to British caregivers, in a hospital in Southampton. He has just reproduced on his Instagram account a drawing showing, next to the portrait of a black man, a burning candle setting fire to the American flag, in tribute to George Floyd.

Racism against blacks, "it's not their problem, it's mine," commented the artist in an accompanying message, certain to be repeated everywhere.

The partial and provocative self-destruction of his canvas in October 2018, just after its acquisition at Sotheby's in London by a collector for 1.042 million pounds (1.185 million euros), had amazed the small world of contemporary art and created a global buzz.

The "Little girl with a balloon", a drawing showing a child flying a red balloon in the shape of a heart, had been caught by a shredder hidden by Banksy himself. The artist seemed to make fun of the auction world, while enjoying it.

- Tel Arsène Lupine -

Like Arsène Lupine, the street artist makes amazing shots but remains invisible. The former Bristol boy plays with his carefully hidden identity to reinforce the impression that he is gifted with a gift of ubiquity and can strike everywhere. Which makes many think that he would be helped and would have accomplices among his fans, like the one who, that day in the room in London, had operated the shredder remotely.

Pastiche or original? The authorship of certain works attributed to him is sometimes disputed. When, for example, appeared last year on a wall in Bordeaux, France, one of the bastions of the "yellow vests" movement, a "Little girl with a balloon", his arm raised with his bloody hand, was that stencil authentic or a clever copy?

Since 2013 Banksy has played all kinds of provocations, such as the false Mona Lisa at the Louvre, royal guards urinating against a wall or more serious social themes, staging children or rats.

First active especially in Great Britain, he had struck his first big blow in June 2018 in Paris with a dozen stencils like that of the sad young girl on the door of the Bataclan, a work that has just been found in Italy.

This mysterious theft was followed last September by another, perpetrated in the parking lot at the Pompidou Center. A stencil representing a masked rat, already damaged the year before, had been stolen. Curiously, a man charged in February as part of this investigation had claimed to have acted at the request of the artist ...

Banksy has a sense of history, timing, symbols ... So last Christmas, he exhibited a walled-up manger in front of sections of wall pierced by a shell in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank. Twelve years earlier, he had drawn on the security wall a little girl searching the body of an Israeli soldier with his arms in the air ...

This sense of history is accompanied by a good sense of business: in October, defending Brexit, he auctioned off a painting entitled The parliament of the monkeys, showing chimpanzees occupying, for 11.1 million euros. all seats in the House of Commons.

In the eyes of those who criticize these provocations, this staggering amount shows that Banksy is playing on two fronts, that of the defense of the oppressed and the humble, but in the court of the richest, a good part of his works now ending in theaters sales.

© 2020 AFP