A packed auction room faces an auctioneer, who gestures towards the painting offered for sale. Where a celebrated artwork should hang, Banksy places a blunt message: “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MORONS ACTUALLY BUY THIS SHIT.” The scene draws on a photograph of the 1987 Christie’s auction at which Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers achieved a record price.

Banksy replaces the painting with an insult directed at the people bidding for it. The humour is immediate, but it also catches the viewer in a contradiction: Morons is itself an artwork made to be bought, sold and collected. Its criticism of the art market becomes part of its appeal within that same market.

The print was introduced in connection with Banksy’s Barely Legal exhibition in Los Angeles in 2006. Accounts of the early release describe approximately 100 unsigned impressions printed for the exhibition from a planned numbered series of 500. Later versions appeared in other colours and editions. That history makes the work’s central question even sharper: what happens when an artist’s attack on the art market becomes something the market prizes?