Banksy – 20th Century & Contemporary A… Lot 21 April 2021 | Phillips

The anonymous street artist, painter, and social activist Banksy has shaken up the art world with his distinctive oeuvre characterized by dark humor, satire and political commentary. Inspired by the thriving street art scene in his home city of Bristol, Banksy’s works started appearing on trains and city streets as early as 1993. Spray paint and cardboard stencils allowed the artist to achieve a meticulous level of detail with speed, keeping him safely beyond the reach of law enforcement. His painting Gas Mask Boy, portraying a crouched figure whose respirator mask reflects the ethereal vision of a blooming field, contains some of the conceptual paradoxes the artist has become most known and recognized for, including the dichotomy between air toxicity and landscape purity, a subject of resounding relevance in today’s escalating climate crisis. Beside the young protagonist is the spray-painted outline of a flower, perhaps the boy’s attempt at painting a meadow, as reflected on his mask.

Particularly poignant in the present work, the gas mask has been a recurring symbol in Banksy’s iconography. Evidently a tool to disguise his likeness (Banksy has, to this day, still not been visually identified), the mask furthermore contains fringe associations that transform it into a message of subversion in itself. First appearing during the Great War, the respirator mask symbolized the threat of both chemical and biological warfare, the destruction of the environment and the extreme lengths humanity will go to when waging war. In recent culture, the object has been used by state law enforcers during demonstrations, and thus come to embody notions of unrest, rioting, but also government control and oppression. Banksy channels all these ideas in his compositions, melding them into a single, easily understandable image that is immediately striking upon first encounter. In Gas Mask Boy, the artist aims his critique at the policing of graffiti art on an elementary level, but also at the environmental damage imposed upon younger generations, which might lead them to eventually lose sight of flowering meadows and be forced into masks for sanitary protection.

Piercing through Banksy’s trademark use of greyscale (which, in public installations frequently incorporates the white or grey hue of the wall itself), the meadow projected onto the surface of the young boy’s mask in the present work features the most vibrant of blues, greens, and yellows, rendering an idealized image of sky and land. The chromatic spread appears embellished, almost false — like those one would find in old pieces of advertising, concealing subliminal messages of freedom, insouciance and happiness. The image is  also redolent of seminal artistic renderings of perfectly lit fields — like Claude Monet’s Effect of Spring, Giverny from 1890— but also of filmic interpretations of carefree, elated moments filled with music and synaesthetic beauties, namely Robert Wise’s 1965 The Sound of Music, starring Julie Andrews. In Gas Mask Boy, the meadow’s immaculate pictorial qualities sit in stark contrast to the remainder of the composition. They suggest notions of hope and escapism — forming an impossible daydream that all other visual elements eventually force back into reality.

Left: Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music, 1965, directed By Robert Wise. Image: © Robert Wise Productions/Argyle Enterprises/Twentieth Century Fox / Diltz / Bridgeman Images.
Right: Claude Monet, Effects of Spring, Giverny, 1890, oil on canvas, Private Collection. Image: © Lefevre Fine Art Ltd., London / Bridgeman Images.

Drawing on recognizable visual imagery, Banksy subverts icons of cultural fantasy and products of capitalism to uncover disquieting truths regarding globalization, exploitation and the mass media’s normalization of violence. The elusive artist’s stealthy presence has not stopped him from becoming a global phenomenon. Hijacking some of the world’s most respected museums and galleries with deceptive works masquerading as legitimate institutional offerings, one such work included a caveman rock drawing that has now found its way into the permanent collection of the British Museum. It is rare that a creative outlaw like Banksy has been so fully embraced by the art world establishment. With graffiti, performances, covert incursions — most recently at the 2019 Venice Biennale — and more than 10 million followers watching his every move on Instagram, Banksy has established himself as an unstoppable cultural force.