BANKSY
Laugh Now, 2002
Stencil spray paint on painted board, in 3 parts
107.5 x 604.5 cm (42 3/8 x 237 7/8 inches)
This work is unique
Provenance
Commissioned for the interior of the Ocean Rooms Night Club, Brighton
Bonhams, London, Urban Art, February 5, 2008, lot 10
Artificial Gallery, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Auction History
Phillips New-York: 12 November 2013
Estimated: USD 300,000 – 400,000
USD 485,000
Banksy – Contemporary Art Day Sale Lot 161 November 2013 | Phillips
Banksy’s work of the past two decades has drawn a litany of both praise and controversy, and nowhere is his simultaneous appeal and notoriety more present than in Laugh Now, 2002. Comprised of his signature means of urban expression—namely board spray-painted with his own stencil designs—the present lot perfectly encapsulates Banksy’s modus operandi while conjuring the dark thematic elements that underlie such a comic piece.
Ten monkeys, the last only present in half its form, stand side-by-side, full frontal and unashamed to display their sandwich-board messages. Though four figures bear no words at all, six communicate a very specific memo: “Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge.” The spare black spray paint upon the bleached white board lends the normally mischievous primates a sinister air, their expressions eliminated in a hyper-saturation of darkness. It is as if Banksy has multiplied their numbers into something resembling an army, daring observers to take pleasure in their misfortune.
Rendered in Banksy’s signature monochrome stenciled style, Laugh Now features a slump-shouldered, forlorn-looking monkey wearing a sandwich board bearing the foreboding pledge ‘Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge’. Though a seemingly comic image at first glance, the social critique behind this image quickly becomes apparent. The chimpanzee is one of Banksy’s most frequently used motifs, alongside the rat, often paired with signage imparting pithy remarks that provide pejorative commentaries on a range of socio-political aspects of contemporary life. These animals often serve a didactic role in Banksy’s works, and the monkey in Laugh Now is no exception.
The chimpanzee first appeared in Banksy’s oeuvre in 2002 when the artist was commissioned by a nightclub in Brighton to create a six-meter long spray-painted mural of the figure repeated ten times, making it unusual for the artist whose works are usually created foremost for public spaces. It was from this work that subsequent versions of Laugh Now were created. Versions of this work have been exhibited widely. Consequently, it has become one of Banksy’s most iconic and widely disseminated images, making headlines in 2008 when the original artwork successfully sold at auction, breaking the record for the artist at the time.
The monkey illustrates the arrogance of mankind. Since Charles Darwin’s development of his theory of evolution in the mid-nineteenth century, which asserted that humans evolved from apes, humans have set out to distance themselves from their primate ancestors by dismissing them as stupid, aggressive, or deviously clever. Similarly, graffiti art has been ridiculed as naïve and uneducated, but Banksy upholds that it is the most powerful and efficient means of artistic expression today and has been quoted saying In this light, Laugh Now can be understood as a representation of the working class, exploited and enslaved by capitalism, who take to the streets to spread their message. Banksy has revisited this theme regularly through in well-known works like Christ with Shopping Bags and Gangsta Rat. Afterall, that is what Banksy aims to achieve himself, creating thought-provoking social critiques through a range of urban interventions under the cover of darkness – and an assumed moniker.
As tremendously deployed in Laugh Now, Banksy is a master of surprising juxtapositions; using humor and biting satire, his work undercuts the elite to elevate the proletarian and shed light on the great issues of our time.
