Artist who 'kidnapped' Banksy’s Drinker claims Sotheby's selling stolen statue — theguardian.com

A British artist claims that a £1m Banksy sculpture that is the centrepiece of a contemporary art auction this week was stolen from him and is being sold illegally. The Drinker is a subversive nod to Rodin’s The Thinker, the famous statue of a man lost in thought with his chin resting on his hand. Banksy’s sculpture has a similar posture, but the man seems collapsed in a drunken slump, with a traffic cone on his head. The piece was left in a small square off Shaftesbury Avenue in central London in 2004, placed there without planning permission, like almost all Banksy’s public work.

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