CREATION OF ADAM

Catalogue Note

Banksy’s Creation of Adam was created for Dismaland, his sprawling “bemusement park” installed in the derelict Tropicana at Weston-super-Mare in 2015. The work isolates perhaps the most recognizable detail from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling: the almost-touching hands of God and Adam. Banksy preserves Adam’s naked human hand but replaces the divine hand with one encased in an emphatically contemporary red rubber protective glove. Contemporary photographs document the painting hanging within the indoor gallery section of Dismaland.

The intervention is characteristically minimal, but it destabilizes the entire meaning of Michelangelo’s image. In the Renaissance original, the tiny interval between the two fingers contains the drama of creation itself—the transmission of divine life from God to man. Banksy inserts a barrier at precisely this point of contact. The glove suggests contamination, sanitation, medical procedure or hazardous material: creation becomes something from which the creator must protect himself. The sublime encounter between humanity and the divine is recast through the mundane visual language of health and safety.

The work fits particularly well within Dismaland, where the visual language of entertainment, authority, environmental catastrophe and institutional control repeatedly contaminated familiar cultural imagery. It also continues Banksy’s long engagement with canonical art history. As with the vandalised paintings of Crude Oils, the effectiveness of the work depends upon the viewer knowing the original: Banksy does not replace Michelangelo but introduces one contemporary detail capable of changing how the entire image is read.