Bomb Middle England, 2001
Acrylic and spray-paint stencil on canvas
92×183 cm (36 1/4 x 72 inches)
Tagged ‘BANKSY’ on the right overlap
Phillips London: 14 February 2013
GBP 229,250
Banksy has been making his distinctive hand-painted mark on the world’s cityscapes since the early 1990s, turning them into his own idiosyncratic sketchbooks. Primarily created by spraying black-and-white paint through stencils, his artworks are at times humorous and nostalgic, but their apparent whimsicality masks a sharp political bite, and they often convey anti-war messages. Such is the case with Bomb Middle England, in which three mild-looking senior citizens are pictured on a manicured green playing the polite English game of bowls but using bombs instead of balls. This is one of the artist’s quintessential strategies: to humorously disarm war-related iconography by turning it into an image of peace, such as with his famous masked flower-thrower in Love is the Air.
Street art is often considered to have originated with the birth of hip-hop culture in late 1970s America. But its roots actually lie in earlier guerilla art forms such as the Situationist actions of the 1950s and the radical happenings of the 1960s, intended as a critique of art’s commodification by the cultural establishment. For example in the early 1960s, the Danish ex- Situationist Asger Jorn made a series of what he called ‘Modifications’ or ‘Défigurations’, in which he painted over cheap 19th-century prints, usually sourced from flea markets, to enhance and modernise what he considered meaningless old images. With this venerable lineage, street art today encompasses many art forms and styles, including graffiti, posters, installation, video, and many forms of modern technology.
After many years of making his hugely popular polemical yet funny work, Banksy has helped raise street art from an underground cult into a globally recognised movement. Thanks to his success, critics and galleries have raised the profile of many other graffiti artists. Examples include designer Shepard Fairey, responsible for Barack Obama’s iconic ‘Hope’ poster from the 2008 US election, and the Norwegian stencil artist Dolk, both of who are now represented by mainstream galleries.
