This is not the first time this has happened; in fact, Banksy’s artwork has been defaced so frequently and widely that it has its own Wikipedia page, which contains a list of about fifty artworks that have been altered or removed.
The street artist went on a nine-day painting binge last week in the wake of the riots in the UK, and exotic animals could be seen all over London.
The artworks culminated in a gorilla at the London Zoo and featured a goat, elephants, monkeys, wolves, pelicans, cats, piranhas, and rhinos.
However, several of the five in the series were taken within hours of their arrival, vandalized, or relocated to a safe location for their own security. The rhino artwork is currently protected by a plastic screen and is watched over by security.
My Art Broker’s Jasper Tordoff, a specialist in Banksy, says he’s heard that the artist’s painting of a howling wolf on a satellite dish—which was taken down by masked men just hours after it appeared—is already being sold between galleries.
He claims that it makes a deep point about how we are unable to enjoy these things.
