Blink-182‘s Mark Hoppus will auction a Banksy painting, valued at up to £5 million, or $6.3 million, with a portion of the earnings directed toward a Los Angeles wildfire fund and medical charities. The rare, hand-painted artwork with an environmental message, titled “Crude Oil (Vettriano),” will go up for auction March 4 at Sotheby’s London, the auction house announced Tuesday.
“We loved this painting since the moment we saw it,” Hoppus said in a statement. “Unmistakably Banksy, but different. We bought it because we loved it. It’s borne witness to our family over these past dozen years.”
“Crude Oil (Vettriano),” completed in 2005, draws inspiration from Jack Vettriano’s “The Singing Butler” and features a waltzing couple, as two men in hazmat suits clean up toxic waste in the background. Hoppus, who acquired the artwork with his wife Skye in 2011, said the piece has held great value to his family, and has been displayed in his Los Angeles living room and hung by their breakfast table in their London home. “It should be seen and appreciated and celebrated and it should bring joy and anger and hope and skepticism,” Hoppus said.
Hoppus, the bassist of the skate-punk band, will donate part of the funds to the California Fire Foundation, the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and Cedars Sinai Hematology Oncology Research.
The Banksy is on display at Sotheby’s New York through Feb. 20 and will headline Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction at the London auction house next month. The rare piece will be on display in London from Feb. 26 to March 4. The auction will also include works by Pablo Picasso, Yoshimoto Nara, Anthony Gormley, and Roy Lichtenstein.
Following the auction, Hoppus will release his memoir, Fahrenheit-182, on April 8. Hoppus announced the memoir in a faux infomercial in September, hinting at the book’s content: his entry into the punk rock band, his struggles with large B-cell lymphoma, Blink-182’s numerous breakups, and his struggles with mental health.
From Rolling Stone US
