Corrosive Bird, 2001
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner in 2001
Exhibited
Glasgow, The Arches Gallery, Peace is Tough, 2001
London, Cargo, Banksy, 2001
Auction History
| Bonhams London 12 February 2015 Est.: GBP 100,000 – 150,000 |
Price Realized
GBP 116,500 / USD 158,255 |
Catalogue Note
The streamlined stencil technique was developed as a direct result of this drive, this endless need to create. The prevailing attitude in Bristol in the early 1990s towards graffiti was as Draconian as the notorious approach of the NYPD on the other side of the Atlantic; participating was not only a creative outlet and an act of defiance, it was a daredevil pastime fraught with huge personal risk. By using a stencil Banksy could prepare in advance and create the image in a matter of seconds and disappear before attracting any attention. Its use has become synonymous with his canvas works such as Corrosive Bird and is the foundation at the heart of his trademark legibility and clarity of message but it was borne simply out of a need to get in and get out without getting caught. What this tends to result in is that his surprisingly sophisticated draughtsmanship is often overlooked or taken for granted. The variation in tone of the bird is almost iridescent and demonstrates a natural fluency with color and paint. In much the same way as Picasso a century earlier Banksy’s approach is built on solid technical foundations which are then stripped back to the cleanest and purest possible form:
“All artists are willing to suffer for their work.
But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?”
It is only natural then that having proven himself on the street he had no option but to transform his imagery such that it could exist and thrive on canvas and in a new context; never more emphatically so than in Corrosive Bird.
This is an artist whose work is motivated by its message, the clarity of the execution key to its communication to the maximum possible audience. When all you can command is a couple of seconds of attention as eyes wander when walking through the streets of the capital the message needs to be incendiary, visually striking and simple. A committed humanitarian and environmentalist Banksy has used his voice and his unparalleled reach to fight for the causes he most believes in, contributing to organizations including Greenpeace and Leonardo DiCaprio’s 11th Hour Foundation.
Every Picture Tells a Lie
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.
