The black stencil image on the security shutters at the zoo is the ninth animal-themed work claimed by the popular street artist in nine days (like prior murals, a picture of the gorilla was shared with his 13 million Instagram followers).

The menagerie of animals at the London Zoo follows a mountain goat perched precariously on a wall buttress, followed by a pair of elephants, three swinging monkeys, a howling wolf, two pelicans eating fish, a big cat mid-stretch, a school of fish, and a rhino mounting a car at various points around the city. The locations have included the sides of buildings, a fish and chip shop sign, a police box, and the bridge of a subway station.

Two of the nine artworks are no longer viewable by the public. Photographs show the image of the howling wolf, painted on a satellite dish, was allegedly stolen by three hooded men in broad daylight on August 8. The big cat mid-stretch spray-painted on a bare sheet of plywood for billboards was removed by a contractor to reduce the likelihood of theft.

Banksy’s murals and artworks have been posted on Instagram without captions, titles or other information, prompting online speculation about their significance. On August 10, The Guardian reported that the artist’s support organization, Pest Control Office, found all the theorizing about the meaning of each new image “way too involved” and that the artist’s simple vision was to cheer up the public during a bleak period.

“Banksy’s hope, it is understood, is that the uplifting works cheer ­people with a moment of unexpected ­amusement, as well as to ­gently underline the human capacity for ­creative play, rather than for destruction and negativity,” wrote Vanessa Thorpe, the Guardian‘s arts and media correspondent.

Given the lack of any philosophical message behind the artworks, you’d be forgiven for thinking the conjecture might stop. However, the thousands of comments (5,645 and counting) on Banksy’s Instagram page interrogating his most recent animal work – a rhino amorously mounting a car in southeast London that was found on Monday – suggest otherwise.

“Nature is about to fck the industry like the industries fckd nature,” one person wrote. “This has to be a metaphor for technology replacing nature – maybe a commentary on AI and job security,” posted another.

The comments go on and on.

Two of the eight works have already been removed. Three hooded men stole the wolf, which was painted on a white satellite dish in Peckham, south London, on Thursday, while a contractor took down the big cat painted on a bare billboard on Saturday to stop it being stolen.

The fish – a school of piranhas painted on a police box in the City of London on Sunday – was described by “criminal damage” by the authorities. It was later cordoned off by workers in hi-vis jackets.

Conjecture has been rife on social media about the meaning behind the street artist’s recent series of animals plastered around London over the last week. They include a mountain goat, a pair of elephants, three monkeys, a wolf, two pelicans, a big cat, and now the fish.

The Guardian wrote yesterday, however, that Banksy’s support organization, Pest Control Office, said that “recent theorising about the deeper significance of each new image has been way too involved.” The paper said it “understands” that “the artist’s vision is simple: the latest street art has been designed to cheer up the public during a period when the new headlines have been bleak, and light has often been harder to spot than shade.”

PA Media reported that the fish mural, which makes the police box look like a fish tank, was picked up on CCTV cameras before being examined by police officers, who are awaiting orders about what to do with it. “We are aware of criminal damage to a City of London Police box in Ludgate Hill,” detective chief inspector Andy Spooner reportedly said. “We are liaising with the City of London Corporation who own the police box.”

So far, two of Banksy’s seven murals have been removed just hours after being spotted. A wolf painted on a white satellite dish in Peckham, south London, was stolen by a trio of hooded men in broad daylight on Thursday, while a big cat sprayed on a bare billboard in northeast London was removed by a contractor to prevent it being stolen.

Then part of the work quickly disappeared. According to photographs of the site, the dish has been removed and was allegedly stolen.

This new series of Banksy works, each of which portrays on animals, seems have begun on Monday, when a stenciled goat was found precariously balanced on the buttress of a wall new Kew Bridge in Richmond, a town in southwest London. Rocks tumble from the goat’s feet in full view of a surveillance camera on the wall pointing directly at the long horned bovine, which looks down onto the street. On Tuesday, two elephants reached their outstretched trucks toward one another from appears to be boarded up windows in Chelsea. And yesterday, three monkeys were spotted, in mid-swing, on Brick Lane. 

In each case, the enigmatic street artist has claimed the work as his own via Instagram. There has not yet been any explanation for his recent burst of productivity or the meaning behind the Ark’s worth of animals.

Some have speculated on what these works may signify anyway. Three of the four pictures on Banksy’s Instagram account show humans blissfully unaware of the stenciled animals near them. That led one user to posit, “There’s definitely a sense that including the people in all these pics is giving off a sense of ignorance to the wild around them.”

Some take an overtly pessimistic view of Banksy’s new work. “Humanity is not going to last… animals will be taking over 🖤,” one user posted to Instagram. Others see a narrative building in the series: “One animal, isolated and helpless; Two animals, watching out for each other; Three animals, overcoming difficulties together?”

Theories range from support of the Palestinian struggle—“a lot of people asking him to paint about Palestine, the gap in the legs is the shape of what’s left isn’t it,” one user said of the goat mural—to the need to reconnect to nature and the importance of family and community. The only thing for certain is that the public wants more. “Same time again tomorrow? ⏳,” one user posted.

First proposed in 2016, the mosaic was started in 2022 and comprises 250,000 glass pieces in 28 different colors along a wall at London Bridge’s bus terminal. Seventy volunteers helped put it together and it’s LSOM’s largest commission to date.

London Bridge, one of the oldest and busiest rail terminals in the UK and Europe, sees 21 million people coming and going each year. This is why Furman chose the location—he wanted as many people as possible to see the mosaic.

“We wanted to use the project to platform mosaic as a medium at home in the gateway to London, where many pieces make up the whole,” LSOM said. “Immediately recognizing Furman’s investment in the community power of the decorative, we commissioned [him] to design the mosaic.”

The artwork is funded by Southwark Council, the Arts Council England, and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Joshua Gordon, a former LSOM student and volunteer who helped create the mosaic, said “this brings a nice piece of color and a splash of excitement to the city – it contrasts the grey exterior of the Shard and stuff, but I think that’s nice.”

The free exhibition is titled Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail. According to the museum the show will focus on both her childhood, recording legacy, and rise to superstardom, with 13 distinct stops on the “trail” that correspond to a point in Swift’s career, beginning with her move to Nashville at 14-years-old.

Among the standout items in the collection are a pair of cowboy boots Swift wore during her country music days and the black ruffled dress she wore in the music video for Fortnight, the single from her recently released album The Tortured  Poet’s Department.

“Taylor Swift’s songs like objects tell stories, often drawing from art, history and literature. We hope this theatrical trail across the museum will inspire curious visitors to discover more about the performer, her creativity and V&A objects,” Kate Bailey, Senior Curator, Theatre & Performance at the V&A said in a press release.

The Songbook Trail comes on the heels of the UK leg of Swift’s monumental Eras tour, which by one account has taken over the British capital city. So much so that London’s mayor Sadiq Khan commissioned and shared a map of the city’s subway system called “Tube Map (Taylor’s Version),” with each line named after one of her albums and each stop after one of her songs, to be displayed at Wembley Park station, with an insert included in last Friday’s Evening Standard.

The tour was expected to bring around £300 million pounds into London, with Barclay’s estimating that the UK economy as a whole would get a £997 million boost thanks to Swifties spending more than 12 times the average UK citizen’s spends on a night out. 

The V&A was ahead of the game. In February of this year the institution began looking for a Taylor Swift consultant who was “versed in handmade memorabilia, such as concert signs and friendship bracelets (which Swift is known for gifting at her shows).”

The Songbook Trail was conceived by the award-winning designer Tom Piper (mastermind of the V&A’s 2021 Alice in Wonderland exhibition). It will be staged in the South Kensington museum’s permanent galleries through September 8, 2024.

According to a press release signed by Sebastian Fahey, Sotheby’s managing director of global fine art, Helena Newman, who has served as chairman of Sotheby’s Europe since 2016, has been named worldwide chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art. Newman will pull double duty, retaining her roles as European chairman and auctioneer.

In Asia, Sotheby’s has brought on the Hong Kong-based specialist Elaine Holt, who worked at Christies for over a decade, most recently as deputy chairman and international director of Christie’s Asia Pacific. Holt’s role as head of the Modern and Contemporary Art team in Asia will be bolstered by two new senior specialists in Contemporary art, Joseph Yang who joins us from the Chinese auction house Poly and former Sotheby’s employee Boris Cornelissen, who left the house in 2020 to run his own gallery in Australia.

Holt’s new position comes at a precarious time in the Asian art market tensions rise between China, the US, and Taiwan, which could forecast unfavorable economic and security implications, and Beijing juggling the a real estate crisis that could prove disastrous. Still, Asia has been a major target for all the auction houses in recent years with all Christie’s, Phillips, Sotheby’s, and Bonhams making moves to strengthen their presence in the region. In 2022 Sotheby’s announced a new Asia headquarters, a 24,000 square foot space in Hong Kong’s luxury hub, Landmark Chater, which is set to open this year. 

Alex Branczik and Max Moore, who together led the Modern and Contemporary business in Asia for the last three years will move head back to London and New York, respectively, also with new titles and responsibilities. Branczik will become chairman and head of Modern and Contemporary art Europe, while Moore will become head of Sotheby’s Sealed and senior private sales specialist for Modern and Contemporary art. 

James Sevier, who for three years worked as European head of Contemporary art, has transitioned to deputy chairman of Contemporary art, Europe, a position which, according to the press release, “will provide him space to work more closely with his portfolio of major clients.” Auctioneer and deputy chairman of Contemporary art, London, Michael Macaulay will move into Sevier’s position as head of Contemporary art, Europe while retaining his deputy chairman title.

The seven-foot-wide work seems to have significantly declined in value. When Christie’s brought the work to auction in 2022, that house gave it a $30 million estimate; just before the sale, the work was quietly withdrawn. This time, Sotheby’s has awarded the work an approximately $20 million–$25 million estimate.

Any Basquiat coming to auction is deemed an event, largely due to the phenomenally high prices his work typically commands. Although the recent secondary market prices are still high, Basquiats used to more regularly outpace their high estimates by large sums at auction. The dip in prices could be explained by collectors being more thoughtful about how many millions they are willing to spend at auction, and by auction houses adjusting estimates to better fit those new, high interest rate–driven buying habits.

In May, Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR), also from 1982, led a modern and contemporary art sale at Philips, selling for $46.5 million. That painting had been estimated to sell for $60 million. The other two Basquiats sold by the house in evening sales that month—Untitled (Portrait of a Famous Ballplayer), from 1981, and Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari (1982)—headed to auction at lower values, selling for $7.8 million and $12.6 million, respectively. Those figures, which all include buyer’s premium, were squarely within the works’ estimates.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s, too, had Basquiats for sale in May. An untitled 1984 collaboration between Basquiat and Andy Warhol went to Sotheby’s with an estimate of $15 million to $20 million. It sold for $19.3 million. Meanwhile, yet another 1982 work, The Italian Version of Popeye Has no Pork in His Diet, sold at Christie’s for $32 million on an estimate of around $30 million.

Earlier this year, Phillips’s Americas president Jean-Paul Engelen told Puck’s Marion Maneker that Basquiat was “the new Picasso,” a euphemism for the fact that the artist has now achieved legendary status on the market. According to Maneker, roughly $125 million worth of Basquiat’s work sold in May. Look back to the last four years, and that figure crosses the billion-dollar mark.

There’s no question that Basquiat’s market has juice at the moment, a trend that it likely to continue. The only question is whether Sotheby’s priced the work low enough to get collectors interested. Either way, it doesn’t matter much. The work, according to Sotheby’s website, has a guarantee and an irrevocable bid, which means it has effectively already sold. The question, now, is who’s taking it home.

Before fees, the total hammer price was $104.3 million, which leaned toward the presale low estimate of $95.3 (tallied without fees). While the sale was by no means a rip-roaring success, it was also hardly a disaster and was received with bullishness by the auction house. Long-established artists took home the top prices but several relative newcomers, especially women, fueled excitement.

At close of play, Antonia Gardner, the head of evening auctions, told ARTnews that the lot estimates were “realistic,” suggesting that the current health of the art market—still recovering from 2023’s decline—had tempered presale expectations.

Twelve works by emerging artists including Takako Yamaguchi, Jadé Fadojutimi, and Emma Webster, alongside pieces by artists with developed blue-chip markets such as George Condo, went under the hammer first in The Now, with nine outstripping their high estimates. Only one painting went unsold (Nicole Eisenman’s Biergarten, 2007), while Yamaguchi and Rebecca Warren set artist records. Etel Adnan was the only other artist to witness a record, peaking at $564,159 for her Untitled (c. 1970) later in the sale after four bidders chased the painting, meaning all three of the evening’s record-breakers were women.

On another positive note, 60 percent of works by female artists surpassed their high estimates.

The Now result confirmed the ascendency of Romania’s Victor Man, whose market has seen rapid growth in recent seasons. His paintingThe Chandler (2013) clocked $515,803, five times its high estimate. Iraqi artist Mohammed Sami also had a good night—Electric Column (2021) sold well for $241,783. Sami has been the subject of major solo shows in London and New York, and is set to feature in another solo exhibition at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire in July.

Of the other 58 lots of modern and contemporary art, five sold for more than $6 million (Picasso, Monet, Signac, Bacon, Miró) and five didn’t sell at all. Across both sales, just over half the lots sold topped their high estimates. 

The Spring evening auction coincided with the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874 and the standout works naturally included paintings by Impressionist trailblazers. Claude Monet’s Arbres au bord de l’eau, printemps à Giverny (1885) nudged past its high estimate of $8.9 million to $9.8 million and Glaçons, environs de Bennecourt (1893) sold for just under $4 million, $500,000 shy of its high estimate. Neither had presale guarantees.

In fact, only seven works were guaranteed and only five secured with irrevocable bids, a reasonably low proportion compared to recent auctions like the Christie’s 20th-century art sale last November when half the lots were financially guaranteed. However, this didn’t appear to inject any nitro into the bidding on Wednesday.

Picasso’s Homme à la pipe (1968), described as “swashbuckling” by Sotheby’s and last sold half a century ago, inspired the auction’s only episode of applause. Auctioneer Helena Newman, chairman of Sotheby’s Europe and co-head of Impressionist and Modern art worldwide, brought the gavel down at $17.4 million (compelled by an Asian collector’s underbid), making it the evening’s top lot. Another work by the Spaniard, a rare example from his blue period (1901-04)—Lluís Vilaró (1904)—was unfortunately pulled before the sale.

A handful of lots sent ripples of excitement through the packed auction room. Francis Bacon’s haunting Study of George Dyer (1970) achieved the second-highest price for a single study of Dyer (Bacon’s lover) at auction, fetching $8.7 million (high estimate, $8.9 million). The compact portrait was included in the painter’s major 1971 exhibition in Paris, the first time a living artist had been given a solo show at the French capital’s Grand Palais since Picasso. Lot 19, Frank Auerbach’s Head of E.O.W II (1964) sold for $5.1 million (high estimate, $6.4 million) against the backdrop of the artist’s ongoing and critically acclaimed exhibition of large-scale drawings at the Courtauld Gallery in London. Before the sale, James Sevier, Sotheby’s European head of contemporary art, told ARTnews that the portrait “carries all the hallmarks of Auerbach’s best works.”

A contingent of punters had apparently pinned their hopes on a dramatic bidding war that didn’t materialize over lot 22, Andy Warhol’s simple but poignant Flowers (1964–65). Immediately after it sold for $1.4 million, the room thinned out. 

Portrait de Geneviève avec un collier de colombes (1944) by Françoise Gilot from the collection of Arianna Huffington, the founder of the Huffington Post, did incite some serious tension as four phone bidders dueled with one in the room. The painting eventually sold for four times its estimate at $918,774, marking one of the highest prices realized for Gilot at auction.

There was serious public interest leading up to the sale as 7,500 people visited the exhibition over a week, and bidding was global, with participants from 41 countries.

While a Chinese buyer bagged Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Fleurs dan un vase (c. 1878) for $3.1 million, there was otherwise a notable lack of Asian bidders. An upbeat Harry Dalmeny, Sotheby’s UK chairman, told ARTnews that “the timing of evening sales in London isn’t ideal for bidders in China.” James Sevier, the European contemporary art head, said that he was encouraged by the number of online bids coming from elsewhere, saying “it’s never been easier to buy at auction, which is only a good thing for the houses.”

The bidding was described as “slow, measured, and respectable” by Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s vice chairman of global fine arts. He was optimistic about the result, adding that the “froth of 2023 was clearing” and the sale was “positive.”

Sotheby’s is now preparing for its modern and contemporary day auction on March 7, with big names like Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, and Banksy set to feature.  

The Bacon, Landscape near Malabata, Tangier (1963), is estimated at £15 million-£20 million. It was painted as a tribute to Peter Lacy, with whom the artist had a years-long passionate, and often abusive, relationship. 

Bacon made the painting in London, just one year after Lacy died tragically in Tangiers at 46. The painting has remained in the same collection for more than 20 years. When it last sold at auction, at Sotheby’s New York for $517,000 in 1985, it became the most expensive Bacon ever sold. (Today, Bacon’s auction record is for the 1969 picture Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which sold at Christie’s New York for $142.4 million in 2013.)

The Bacon painting was originally sold by Marlborough Gallery in 1963 and, according to Christie’s, has been on view in 32 exhibitions across 27 cities worldwide, including the 1971–72 retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris and the Royal Academy of Arts’s “Francis Bacon: Man and Beast” in 2022.

Monet’s Matinée sur la Seine, temps net (1897) is among the 21 pictures that make up the artist’s “Mornings on the Seine” series. Each work in it focuses of the same section of the famous river at different times of the day. 

Estimated to bring in £12 million-£18 million, Matinée sur la Seine, temps net is coming to auction for the first time in 45 years. 

The work was made in Monet’s bateau-atelier (studio-boat) in the middle of the river that snaked through Giverny, the countryside village where Monet created some of his most recognized works, including the “Nymphéas” (Water Lilies) series.

Matinée sur la Seine, temps net was last exhibited in 1990 as part of the “Monet in the ‘90s: The Series Paintings,” held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

The Bacon painting will be on display at Christie’s New York through February 19, and both pictures will be on display at Christie’s London from March 1 through 7.