PLASTER HEART, 2012

Catalogue Note

Love Hurts

Plaster Heart reduces one of Banksy's most persistent symbols to its simplest form: a large black heart-shaped balloon floating against an almost completely empty white ground. Yet the familiar emblem of love has suffered a minor injury. Two small strips of yellow plaster cross its upper-right side, transforming an otherwise universal romantic symbol into something unexpectedly vulnerable.

The intervention is tiny, but that is precisely why it works. A plaster belongs to the world of grazed knees and minor wounds; placed on a heart, it becomes a wonderfully literal remedy for emotional pain. Banksy turns the language of heartbreak into physical comedy. The heart has been hurt, so someone has patched it up.

A Wounded Balloon

The balloon itself inevitably connects Plaster Heart to Banksy's broader vocabulary of balloons, hearts and fragile objects. But unlike the red heart of Girl with Balloon, which becomes something desired and potentially lost, this heart is monumental, black and already damaged. The shift from red to black changes the emotional temperature of the image: romance has given way to something darker, although the yellow plaster prevents the work from becoming sentimental or tragic.

Formally, the composition is exceptionally restrained. Almost the entire image depends upon the contrast between the enormous mass of black paint and the untouched white board surrounding it. The soft overspray around the balloon gives it volume, while the faint hand and string almost disappear toward the bottom of the composition. Against this monochrome field, the two yellow strips become disproportionately important. They are the smallest elements in the painting, yet they provide its meaning.

Plaster Heart demonstrates Banksy's ability to construct an image from an idea so simple that it feels almost like a visual proverb. Love is wounded. The wound has been treated. Whether the repair will hold is another question entirely.

There is something gently optimistic in that distinction. The heart is not shattered, destroyed or discarded. It has been hurt and repaired—imperfectly, cheaply and rather absurdly—but it is still floating. Even a broken heart, Banksy seems to suggest, sometimes just needs a plaster.