Street Art, the Publicity of Art

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

Love Is In The Air

2002 Spray paint on canvas 51x43x4 cm Signed “Banksy LA” dated 2002 numbered 1/5 all on the reverse

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.

Love Is In The Air (Flower Thrower)

2003 Silkscreen print 50x70 cm

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 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.”

Rude Copper

2002 Silkscreen print 57x41 cm

Rude Copper is one of the first works Banksy made on paper, published by Pictures On Walls in 2002. The policeman is shown flipping off the spectator. To put his works up in public spaces, Banksy inherently challenges the local authorities, personified in British culture by a Bobby, a typical policeman who in urban slang is referred as a “copper”. The artist has come across many of them, and his stories about these encounters reveal the foundational principle of street art: to make something beautiful, you don’t have to ask permission. Banksy offers different interpretations, each one contradicting the other: the image gives us back an authority that, by mutating the common view, shows the policeman as “one of us;” it could also suggest an authority figure that, deviating from his role, leads others to not trust and to be more critical.

Queen Vic

2003 Silkscreen print 70x50 cm

Queen Vic (Queen Victoria) is a 2003 work and one of the first images printed at Pictures On Walls, Banksy’s print house, which opened its doors in 2003 at 46 Commercial Rd., London. The artist is famous for satirizing power: the image depicts Queen Victoria as a lesbian engaged in “queening”. Queen Victoria once declared that women aren’t able to be gay and approved laws against homosexuality. The image, which suggests the hypocrisy behind the management of power, comes from a stencil located on the rolling shutter of a store between St. Mark’s Road and Brenner Street in Bristol in 2002. Banksy wrote, “Many thought the image of Queen Victoria was too disrespectful to paint in random places around the city. So I painted several of them and they were all erased, but one of these was on the metal shutter of a store that sold junk every day of the week and didn’t close before 9 p.m., and only then was the shutter rolled down. This ensured that the stencil was sort of protected just because of the minor fact that it could only be seen after 9 p.m.” The image was displayed on a canvas for the first time in 2003 in a collective exhibition at the Vanina Holasek Gallery in New York.