Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus Is Selling His Beloved Banksy Painting
The pop-punk musician is auctioning off Bansky’s 2005 painting “Crude Oil (Vettriano)” and plans to donate a portion of the proceeds to Los Angeles charities
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Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus is parting ways with his beloved Banksy painting—for a good cause.
Hoppus, who is best known as the bassist and co-founder of the American pop-punk band Blink-182, is auctioning a rare, hand-painted piece called Crude Oil (Vettriano). It’s expected to sell for between $3.8 and $6.3 million.
The musician plans to donate a portion of the proceeds to three charities: the California Fire Foundation, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Cedars Sinai Hematology Oncology Research. (Earlier this month, Blink-182 also hosted a benefit concert to support relief efforts for the recent Los Angeles fires.)
Banksy, the mysterious British street artist, painted the piece in 2005. It was displayed at the artist’s first conventional gallery show, called “Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin” in Notting Hill.
The painting is inspired by The Singing Butler, a 1992 piece created by Scottish artist Jack Vettriano.
The original painting shows a woman in a red dress dancing with a man in a black suit on the beach. A butler holds an umbrella over their heads, while a maid stands in the background holding her hat and another umbrella.
In Banksy’s version, the maid is replaced by two men wearing hazmat suits and pushing a barrel of toxic waste. He also added a sinking oil liner in the distance.
Crude Oil (Vettriano) and the other paintings shown at the 2005 exhibition reflected “life as it is now,” Banksy said at the time, according to a statement from Sotheby’s.
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“The real damage done to our environment is not done by graffiti writers and drunken teenagers, but by big business … exactly the people who put gold-framed pictures of landscapes on their walls and try to tell the rest of us how to behave,” he added.
Hoppus and his wife, Skye, acquired Crude Oil (Vettriano) in 2011. Since then, the piece has been on display in the living room of their Los Angeles home, as well as near the breakfast table at their home in London.
“We loved this painting since the moment we saw it,” Hoppus says 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.”
Now, however, it’s time for the painting to be “out there in the world, seen by as many as possible” Hoppus adds.
The painting will be sold during Sotheby’s “Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction” in London on March 4. Before it hits the auction block, it will be on view at Sotheby’s London starting February 26.
Oliver Barker, the chairman of Sotheby’s in Europe, noted the similarities between the painting and punk rock. Hoppus fell in love with the piece for its “rebellious spirit, raw edge and unfiltered expression,” Barker says in the statement.
“Street art and punk rock share the same vocabulary—they speak to the outsider, the rebel and the overlooked,” Barker adds. “Both movements were born from the margins. They challenge authority and rewrite the rules.”
Hoppus is selling the piece during a “reflective moment” in his life, according to Sotheby’s. He’s preparing to publish his memoir, Fahrenheit-182, which will describe his upbringing as an “angst-ridden” kid and his ongoing struggles with anxiety and depression. The book also details Hoppus’ experience with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma in 2021. He was declared cancer-free later that year.
“I still feel like I’m in my 20s, skateboarding and being an idiot," he told People magazine’s Jeff Nelson in 2022. “In reality, I’m 50 years old and glad to be alive.”
