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Space Girl and Bird, 2003

BY

BANKSY
Space Girl and Bird, 2003
Spray-paint on steel
133 x 54 cm (52 3/8 x 21 1/4 inches)

 

 

Auction History
Bonhams London: 25 April 2007
Price realized: GBP 288,000 / USD 398,648

In Space Girl and Bird, Banksy creates a haunting fusion of innocence and alienation. A young girl in a bulky astronaut helmet and parka holds a delicate yellow bird, the only bright spot in this post-industrial dreamscape. Painted on a corroded metal surface, the work contrasts the rusted, earthly texture with the child’s surreal, otherworldly appearance. Above her floats a faint pink heart: half graffiti, half mirage. The piece plays with contrasts: protection versus fragility, cold armor versus warm affection. The girl’s helmet, meant to shield her from danger, isolates her instead. Yet even in this estranged state, she holds a creature of freedom and fragility. Banksy’s recurring themes, childhood, war, love, dystopia, collide gently in this scene, asking whether there’s still room for tenderness in a world braced for impact.

Masked like the clandestine identity of the artist himself, the figure in Space Girl and Bird is a variation from Banksy‘s subversive theme of helmeted characters. The painting, spay-painted onto industrial sheet metal, is a study for one of the guerrilla artist’s very rare artistic and commercial commissions, which culminated in the cover art for the English rock band Blur’s Think Tank album, released in 2003.
 
Where the album cover depicted an embracing couple, estranged by their diving helmets in a reference to the shrouded lovers in Magritte’s Les Amants, the helmet enclosing the head of the life-sized child in Space Girl and Bird isolates her from her pet – and by extension, from nature in general. The image is closely related in its message of corrupted innocence to a work the artist stenciled in the streets of London of a similarly pony-tailed girl in a gas mask clutching a red flower, which she is unable to smell.
Blur, former art students themselves, sought to align themselves with Banksy because this celebrated graffiti artist, art terrorist and prankster’s often humorous images of discontent encapsulate and satirize the pervasive introversion and alienation current in contemporary British culture. Think Tank is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Blur, released in 5 May 2003. Continuing the jam-based studio constructions of the group’s previous album, the album expanded on the use of sampled rhythm loops and brooding, heavy electronic sounds. There are also heavy influences from dance music, hip hop, dub, jazz and African music. Recording sessions started in November 2001, taking place in London, Morocco and Devon to finish a year later.

Think Tank is a concept album about “love and politics”, associated with the widespread protests against the Iraq war notably. Anti-war themes are recurrent in the album as well as in associated artwork and promotional videos. After leaking onto the internet in March, Think Tank was released on 5 May 2003 and entered the UK Album Chart at number one, making it Blur‘s fifth consecutive studio album to reach the top spot. Think Tank also reached the top 20 in many other countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Japan. It was their highest charting album in the United States, reaching number 56 on the Billboard 200. The album produced three singles, which charted at number 5, number 18 and number 22 respectively on the UK Singles Chart.

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