Love Is In The Air 2002 Spray paint on canvas 51x43x4 cm Signed “Banksy LA” dated 2002 numbered 1/5 all on the reverse
Love Is In The Air (Flower Thrower) 2003 Silkscreen print 50x70 cm
Girl with Balloon 2004-2005 Silkscreen print 76x56 cm Girl with Balloon is probably Banksy’s most popular image, voted in a 2017 survey promoted by Samsung as Britain's most beloved work. Banksy painted Girl with Balloon for the first time in 2004
as a stencil on the wall of a bridge in the Southbank neighborhood in London. The artist put his signature on an electrical box in the lower righthand corner of the work, and accompanied the image with the words, “There’s always hope.” In his book Wall and Piece, he added, “When the time comes to leave, just walk away quietly and don’t make any fuss.” Another version of the stencil appeared in the London neighbourhood of
Shoreditch, near the Liverpool Street station. The owners of the store where Banksy stencilled the artwork suggested detaching it from the wall to auction it off, but this sparked a wave of protest and the work was left there. Ten years later, hidden behind an advertisement, an anonymous group removed the stencil. The work reappeared during the presentation of the exhibition Stealing Banksy? and was sold shortly thereafter.
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Love Is In The Air, also known as Flower Thrower, appeared for the first time in Jerusalem in 2003 as a stencil; it was painted on the wall built to separate the Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. The artist sees the wall as something that “[...] essentially transforms Palestine into the largest open-air prison in the world”. The same year, Banksy made the version seen here, set against a
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red background. Love Is In The Air alludes to and transforms the typical image of activists participating in the student riots in the United States and Great Britain during the Vietnam War, and takes its title from the famous 1977 song by Australian singer John Paul Young. Banksy mutates the image and upends the violent outcome of the young activist, placing a bunch of flowers in his hand, a symbol of peace and beauty. In his book Wall and Piece, the artist commented that, “The biggest crimes in the world aren’t committed by people who break the laws, but by those who follow the laws.”
