Corrosive Bird, 2001
Stencil spray-paint and acrylic on canvas
76×76 cm (30×30 inches)
Unique
Stencil-signed “BANKSY”, lower right
Bonhams London: 12 February 2015
GBP 116,500 / USD 158,255
Committed humanitarian and environmentalist, Banksy has used his voice and his unparalleled reach to fight for the causes he most believes in. Corrosive Bird can be seen as a melancholic, heartfelt paean to the subjugation of the natural world in the hunt for ever greater development and the thoughtless expansion of industry in areas of natural beauty.
Every Picture Tells a Lie
Banksy, Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall, November 2001
The innocence of the hummingbird as it feeds from the toxic beaker recalls the Madonna and Child, an image that Banksy reimagined so viciously with the infant feeding from a bottle marked with skull and crossbones. Unlike his Madonna though (titled Toxic Mary) this work is categorically unique, an instance almost unheard of in the artist’s work. He positioned it himself as being fundamentally important to his oeuvre of the period by featuring it in both Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall, and Wall and Piece, his seminal book documenting the first ten years of his life as a graffiti writer. Unlike many other key images from this period however it has not been reproduced elsewhere: it lives, fragile as the hummingbird feeding for the last time, as distinct, rare and irreplaceable in the artist’s mind.
