Spray-paint on cardboard

89.9 x 62 cm (35 3/8 x24 3/8 inches)

Unique

Initialed and inscribed “☮ Ⓑ ♡ ⁜” lower right

Phillips Hong-Kong: 15 October 2010

HKD 1,625,000

 

 

Two of only three known versions painted in 2008, his pictures of Abe Lincoln show Banksy confronting and disrupting another icon—one of the most famous Presidents of the United States of America. In these pictures, Banksy has taken the famed face of “Honest Abe” and transformed him into a ghoulish, comical presence. In one of them, googly eyes appear to pop out of his head as though from a skull; in the other, there is a spectral halo around the eyes, as though they were glowing. These potentially sinister traits are deliberately undermined by the stenciled decoration behind him, and in one case, by the green polka dots that cover his face and shirt.

 

These two pictures on cardboard—from a series of only three—were created in 2008 when Banksy visited New Orleans, three years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. There, Banksy used the still-tattered urban fabric of New Orleans as an eloquent backdrop for his critiques of the situation. Banksy’s works encapsulated sympathy, anger and above all humor, reacting accusingly to the inadequate aid and slow subsequent clean-up operations there. In one case, Banksy painted Abraham Lincoln as a homeless man, pushing a trolley full of goods, using the same stencil he would employ for these works on cardboard. The building upon which Banksy had painted his image of Lincoln has since been demolished to make way for a healthcare facility.

 

Banksy’s use of the instantly-recognizable features of Lincoln as a visual theme demonstrated his laser-sharp sense of satire. Lincoln was the great figurehead of the emancipation movement, liberating the slaves of the Southern states—many of whose descendants remain at a socio-economic disadvantage throughout America. During Hurricane Katrina, that legacy of structural discrimination was felt all the more keenly as the poorer black areas of New Orleans suffered the greatest losses when the levee broke. Depicting Lincoln walking the streets, pushing his cart, wearingly highlighted the shortcomings of his political descendants. After all, Lincoln, like the Bush administration on whose watch Katrina hit, was a Republican.

In these distorted, dystopian depictions, the conundrums provided by historical hindsight are explored to different effect, with Banksy presenting a Lincoln who is less an emancipator or a martyr and more an ectoplasmic boogieman. Lincoln was one of the first US Presidents to make use of photography in order to promote himself. In the years leading up to his first presidential election, photographs were disseminated to give him a more human aspect, countering rumors of his unusual height and supposed ugliness. Lincoln’s success in making himself instantly recognizable, combined with his assassination, resulted in a strong pictorial legacy. This in turn makes Lincoln all the more apt as a subject for Banksy’s ghost-train-style interventions. The iconic image has been converted, with Banksy deflating the reverence that often surrounds Lincoln’s legacy, and instead showing him as a comical ghoul.

“I wanted to highlight the state of the clean-up operation. Only later did it dawn on me that if you choose to do this by drawing all over their stuff, you’re actually only slowing down that clean-up operation.”