Monkey Detonator (Diptych), 2002
Stenciled with the artist’s name on the right overturn edge of the right canvas
Provenance
Bonhams, London, 17 April 2013, Lot 38
Acquired from the above by the present owner
Auction History
Sotheby’s London: 8 March 2018
Estimated: GBP 150,000 – 250,000
Price realized: GBP 513,000 / USD 712,230
Mythical, laconic and charged with latent insight, Monkey Detonator is a playful and iconic piece of neo-conceptual art by the iconoclastic British artist Banksy. Stenciled in the act of a dynamic gesture, the monkey is poised in the instant before a violent explosion. The viewer’s expectations, however, are subverted upon seeing the bananas to which the detonator is attached: the monkey is, unbeknownst to him, destroying what he needs in pursuit of what he thinks he needs. The Banksy effect is palpable. We are immediately imbued with the sense of a hidden meaning, and we turn to the symbols in front of us for its derivation and discovery.
Banksy frequently makes use of representations of animals, particularly those of rats and monkeys, which seem to anthropomorphize upon depiction. Serving to remind the unsuspecting viewer of the close analogies between primate and human behavior, the monkey is a crucial motif in Banksy’s work. Just as humans destroy the very materials on which they depend to achieve obscure and unknown benefit, the monkey’s powerful jump betrays his unthinking faith in the contents of the safe. Like the bestiaries of La Fontaine or Aesop’s fables, the monkey appears precisely to embody an important truth about human nature.
Banksy, Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall, November 2001
In his distinctive politicized lexicon, Banksy makes extensive use of the stencil in Monkey Detonator. His characters feature in miniature, theatrical plays containing stenciled and re-contextualized objects. In an artistic protest that trivializes and mocks late capitalist greed, the potent explosive TNT in the present work is replaced by an innocuous bunch of bananas. Banksy complicates the standard process of decryption performed by the viewer in response to a conceptual artwork. While his works do often suggest ideas addressing economic and political power imbalances, they deliberately maintain a certain ambiguity. This space, this room for playful interpretation, also possesses a political motive; it grants the viewer with the very creative agency Banksy believes is quashed by the political system surrounding them. Banksy strikes a balance. An artwork without a critical message is intolerably apolitical, but an artwork that restricts viewer participation is just as oppressive as the very systems being criticized.
