Various Museums 2003 - 2005
From roughly 2003 to 2005 Banksy visited some of the most important and widely respected museums in both the UK and the USA where he secretly placed his own artworks amongst their esteemed collections. Typically Banksy, the meticulously planning and preparation involved saw museum specific artworks created that were documented and recorded by his colleagues. First hit was the Tate Britain in October 2003 when the artist placed his brilliant work “Crimewatch UK Has Ruined the Countryside For All of Us,” in the museum. The work, remained hanging for a number of hours before unceremoniously falling to the floor and being discovered.
April 2004 witnessed the street artist enter London’s Natural History Museum with his work consisting of a taxidermied rat in a glass-fronted box. entitled “Banksus Militus Ratus”. In the work the stuffed rat wears sunglasses and a full graffiti kit with the phrase “Our Time Will Come” spray-painted in the background.
Nearly a year later from the Tate Modern stunt, Banksy visited the Louvre where he hung his own interpretation of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The iconic work whose mysterious smile was replaced with a bright yellow, acid smiley face was later sold at auction for around £60,000.
Finally in March 2005, and in his most ambitious museum stunt, Banksy entered four world famous New York museums: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum and The American Museum of Natural History where he hung four works.
Di-Faced Tenners Circa 2004
The title ‘Di-Faced’, plays on the word defaced creating a counterfeit parody of the £10 note by replacing the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II with that of the late Princess Diana. Instead of Bank of England, the note reads, ‘Banksy of England’ and below the banner, an inscription reads, ‘I promise to pay the bearer on demand the ultimate price’, a reference to the fate of the Princess. With regards to quality and production, the note is printed using inks on paper almost identical to that used on official UK-issued currency.
The first version of Banksy's Di-Faced Tenner was produced in 2004, on a single sheet with five counterfeit £10 notes, showing both sides, released as a signed edition of 50. Banksy also released an edition of 32 artist proofs in a single tone colour. The relatively low edition size of this work continues to drive a high demand from collectors today.
Banksy produced the notes in August 2004 and at least 100,000 were known to be printed adding up to a million pounds in fake currency. He created them for a stunt in which he dropped a suitcase full of the fake tenners into the crowd at the Notting Hill Carnival as well as at the Reading Festival. Many people got their hands on one or more and some even spent it as legitimate currency. While causing controversy in his own way, Banksy was never actually charged for counterfeit.
Disneyland Guantanamo Bay 2006
Documented in the seminal documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop” Banksy visited “The happiest place on Earth” Disneyland where he placed a life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The hooded figure was placed inside the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at the California theme park with the assistance of Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash.Providing a social commentary on the War on Terror, the duo snuck a backpack stuffed with a deflated blow-up doll through security and inflated the doll near the Rocky d ride on a walkway bench. The display conjured up images of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre, where inmates kneeled in sensory gear surrounded by wired enclosures. The installation was taken down in less than two hours, but the media had already captured the work through photography and video and circulated the news.
Central Park 2013
Better Out Than In (the title referencing a quote by impressionist Paul Cézanne, "All pictures painted inside, in the studio, will never be as good as those done outside.) was a residency undertaken by Banksy in New York City during October 2013. Banksy unveiled at least one work of art daily, documenting it on both a dedicated website and an Instagram account. The majority of the works were stencil graffiti and chiefly political, a distinctive characteristic of Banksy. Other pieces and multimedia exhibits toyed with dark humour and satire. The month-long residency drew controversy amongst some locals for its more politically strong pieces, and received mixed reviews from critics. Highlights of the residency included the stunt where an old man was selling original Banksy paintings outside of Central Park for $60 USD, Waiting in Vain (the show's 24th instalment) illustrated a man in a tuxedo holding flowers, presumably jilted by his date, and Sirens of the Lambs, where a military-style cargo truck filled with squealing, stuffed animatronic livestock was driven around the Meatpacking District.
Love is in the Bin 2018
Famously first graffitied in Waterloo Bridge with the caption “There is always hope” amongst other locations around the city, Girl with Balloon has become Banksy’s most popular and, perhaps, enduring image. Appearing on 5 October 2018, a version of the work in the artist’s frame sold at Sotheby’s London. Just after the spray-painted artwork sold an alarm went off during the auction and the work slowly began to fall through a shredder hidden inside the frame. A piece of art history, Love is in the Bin perfectly summises an artist in their ascendancy whose brilliance (both conceptually and in its execution), innovative and revolutionary approach to his craft captures the imagination in an unparalleled way.
.
For more information about our Banksy original paintings for sale or to buy Banksy signed and unsigned prints, contact Andipa via sales@andipa.com or call +44 (0)20 7581 1244.