I’M OUT OF BED AND DRESSED, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?

A Rat with an Attitude

One of Banksy’s oversized rats stands upright, paintbrush in hand, beside the red inscription: “I’M OUT OF BED AND DRESSED – WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?” The combination of monumental scale and deliberately low ambition turns the rat into a wonderfully deadpan portrait of resistance to everyday expectations.

The humor also depends on the rat appearing to have painted the words himself. Banksy’s rodents frequently operate as surrogates for the graffiti artist: nocturnal, unwanted and occupying the city without permission. Here, however, rebellion is reduced to something more mundane—the simple refusal to be productive.

Banksy on Melrose

The work was located around Melrose Avenue and Orange Drive and was already documented by September 2006, when Banksy was in Los Angeles for Barely Legal. Contemporary reporting later recorded Shepard Fairey visiting the work and describing graffiti, like rats or roaches, as something that will always “figure out a way to exist.”

With its combination of rat, paintbrush and sarcastic slogan, I’m Out of Bed and Dressed, What More Do You Want? captures the irreverent humor of Banksy’s early street practice: a tiny manifesto for anyone who considers merely showing up an achievement.