The anonymous street artist Banksy caused a stir on Monday with a striking new work depicting a judge attacking a protester with a gavel, painted on one of Britain’s most prestigious court buildings.
The image, in black and white, apart from a splatter of red on the demonstrator’s sign, appeared on an outer wall of the Royal Courts of Justice, an imposing London complex that houses the High Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales and is considered one of the most secure locations in Britain.
Now, just two days later, Banksy’s latest work is gone.
The complex had quickly moved to block the artwork from public view, moving large metal screens in front of it on Monday. Then, on Wednesday morning, visitors to the mural filmed a man, wearing a mask, scrubbing the image off the walls, with two police officers standing guard nearby.
A spokesman for Britain’s Ministry of Justice said in an email that the work had been destroyed. The Royal Courts of Justice are a protected building under British heritage laws, the spokesman said, so the court’s service is “obliged to maintain its original character.”
Historic England, which governs such building protections, says on its website that the 19th-century court buildings are “one of the foremost examples of High Victorian Gothic Revival design” in the country.
A spokeswoman for Banksy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The artist posted an image of the artwork on Instagram on Monday, which is typically how he announces new work.
His fans had widely interpreted the piece as a comment on the treatment of supporters of Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian activist group that Britain’s government banned as a terrorist organization in July. Since the prohibition came into force, the police have arrested hundreds of people at demonstrations for displaying messages of support for the group.
Although some Banksy artworks have been delicately removed from walls and structures, large auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s don’t sell them, and the artist refuses to provide certificates of authenticity.
Still, the decision to scrub the image off the wall perplexed some dealers in street art. John Brandler, a gallery owner who has traded several Banksy murals, said in an interview that he couldn’t understand why the court service had not hired him, or another dealer, to carefully remove the painting from the building’s walls so it could be sold to raise money for charity.
“Yes, it was criminal damage,” Brandler said. “But why not use that criminal damage to benefit the community?”
Brandler said that he believed the work could have raised up to 5 million British pounds, or about $6.8 million.
Jo Maugham, a founder of the Good Law Project, the legal organization that filmed the mural’s removal and that has opposed the ban on Palestine Action, said in a statement that the British government should not be destroying a work by “an important artist” who had criticized government policy.
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
The post British Courts Service Destroys Banksy Mural Depicting Attack by Judge appeared first on New York Times.
