"Banksy Painting Self-Destructs After Fetching $1.4 Million at Sotheby’s."

Nice PR.

The NYT reports:

The work, “Girl With a Balloon,” a 2006 spray paint on canvas, was the last lot of Sotheby’s “Frieze Week” evening contemporary art sale. It was hammered down by the auctioneer Oliver Barker for 1 million pounds, more than three times the estimate and a new auction high for a work solely by the artist, according to Sotheby’s.

“Then we heard an alarm go off,” Morgan Long, the head of art investment at the London-based advisory firm the Fine Art Group, who was sitting in the front row of the room, said in an interview on Saturday. “Everyone turned round, and the picture had slipped through its frame.”

The painting, mounted on a wall close to a row of Sotheby’s staff members, had been shredded by a remote-control mechanism on the back of the frame....

As the artwork shredded itself, a seemingly unperturbed Mr. Barker, the auctioneer and Sotheby’s European chairman, said, “It’s a brilliant Banksy moment, this. You couldn’t make it up, could you?”

Theater. It's all already been done, but it's a charming iteration of an old idea. It's not as though anyone really wants or needs a painting of a sentimental notion, a girl with a balloon! The art is something other than that, and it's cute to do the destruction at the auction, with the money (almost) in hand.

Reminds me of the 2-year-old who put her parents' $1,060 in cash through the family paper shredder, which we were just talking about yesterday. But the girl had no artistic intention — or did she?!! — so that's not the old idea I'm talking about. I'm thinking about stuff like "Erased de Kooning":



"It's not a negation. It's a celebration!"

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"Canada agrees to join trade accord with U.S. and Mexico, sending new NAFTA deal to Congress."

WaPo headline. First 2 sentences of the article:

Canada agreed late Sunday to join the trade deal that the United States and Mexico reached last month, meeting negotiators’ self-imposed midnight deadline designed to allow the current Mexican president to sign the accord on his final day in office and giving President Trump a big win on trade.

The new treaty, preserving the three-country format of the original North American Free Trade Agreement favored by business groups and congressional Republicans, is expected to be signed by Trump and his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in 60 days, with Congress likely to act on it next year.

NYT headline: "U.S. and Canada Reach Trade Deal to Salvage Nafta." First 2 sentences of the article:

The United States and Canada reached a last-minute deal to salvage the North American Free Trade Agreement on Sunday, overcoming deep divisions to keep the 25-year-old trilateral pact intact.

The deal came after a weekend of frantic talks to try and preserve a trade agreement that has stitched together the economies of Mexico, Canada and the United States but that was on the verge of collapsing. 

In WaPo, it sounds like a new deal. In the NYT, it sounds like what we're getting is the preservation of the old deal.  The NYT makes it seem like a close call with disaster, and WaPo says the deadline is self-imposed and designed to make Trump look like he has a big win.

I suspect that both newspapers wanted to make Trump look like less of a success and they chose different approaches to diminishing him.

WaPo credits Trump with a "big win" in the first sentence. The NYT forefronts the stress. In the first few paragraphs: "a year of tense talks and strained relations," "frenetic Sunday." You'll have to wait for paragraph 6 to see "a win" for Trump:

The deal represents a win for President Trump, who has derided Nafta for years and threatened to pull the United States from the pact if it was not rewritten in America’s favor. Overhauling trade deals has been one of Mr. Trump’s top priorities as president and he has used tariffs and other threats to try and force trading partners to rewrite agreements in America’s favor. 

It's a "win" not a "big win," and maybe the Times isn't even conceding that it's a win. It only "represents a win." And Trump created all the disorder and threat on his own. He didn't critique NAFTA for any real problems. He "derided" it.

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