Banksy’s ‘Pulp Fiction’ Fetches Over $160,000 at Auction

John Travolta’s Vincent Vega and Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules Winnfield hold bananas instead of guns in the iconic painting.

Tate Ward Auctions

Banksy’s pop art reimagining of a scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction has fetched over $160,000 at Tate Ward Auctions’ “By Collectors for Collectors” event. 

The famed piece depicts John Travolta’s Vincent Vega and Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules Winnfield with arms raised in the “divine intervention” scene, when the hitmen kill a man who had just aimed and emptied at revolver at them. Instead of pistols, the suit-clad characters clutch bananas. 

Hypebeast reports that Banksy’s Pulp Fiction first appeared in 2002 near London’s Old Street Tube station. It remained visible until 2007, when the Transport for London painted over the image. A local then spray-painted a message addressed to Banksy that read, “Come Back.” The famously elusive stencil graffiti artist responded by painting a different iteration of the piece, in which Vega and Winnfield are dressed in banana costumes and holding handguns. 

Pulp Fiction sold for £125,000, or about $166,509, alongside contemporary and urban works by Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Anish Kapoor Damien Hirst, Cy Twombly and others.  Visit Tate Ward Auctions’ website to see all of the lots. 

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