FLOWER THROWER TRIPTYCH, 2019

Taking an Icon Apart

With Flower Thrower Triptych, Banksy returns to one of the defining images of his career and does something unexpected: he takes it apart.

The original Love Is In The Air, commonly known as Flower Thrower, depends upon an extraordinary visual contradiction. A masked protester adopts the unmistakable posture of someone about to hurl a weapon, yet the expected stone or Molotov cocktail has been replaced by a bouquet of flowers. Aggression remains in the body; peace occupies the hand. The collision between those two ideas is what gives the image its enduring force.

In the 2019 Gross Domestic Product edition, however, Banksy divides the composition into three independent panels: the flowers, the protester and the hand connecting them. The familiar image can only be reconstructed mentally. What once operated as a single instantaneous visual statement has become fragmented.

Deconstructing Banksy

That fragmentation makes the triptych considerably more interesting than a straightforward reproduction of an established motif. Banksy effectively disassembles his own iconography.

The three elements do not even share identical dimensions. The central figure dominates, while the hand becomes a small independent panel and the bouquet occupies another. Displayed together, the spaces separating them become part of the composition. The viewer must bridge those gaps and restore the action.

There is an intriguing conceptual consequence. Isolated from the protester, the bouquet becomes almost entirely benign. Isolated from the flowers, the masked figure again appears threatening. It is only when the separate pieces are mentally reunited that Banksy's original joke—and its proposition that violence might somehow be transformed into beauty—returns.

The work therefore reveals how carefully constructed the original image actually is. Remove one element and its meaning changes completely.

From the Wall to Gross Domestic Product

The edition also belongs firmly within the logic of Banksy's Gross Domestic Product, launched in Croydon in 2019 as both a retail experiment and a characteristically contradictory examination of art, merchandise, copyright and consumption. Flower Thrower Triptych was released directly through GDP in an edition of 300, with purchasers initially agreeing not to offer the work at auction for three years. Pest Control subsequently issued certificates of authenticity for the edition.

This is Banksy’s first experiment with a new technique for making prints - spray the stencil onto processing film and expose the result directly onto a silk screen. This avoids photography or computer manipulation and creates a super accurate analogue representation of gestural mark making. In other words - looks pretty dope.

Banksy also used the work to experiment with printmaking. The original description identified it as his first experiment with a process in which the stencil was sprayed onto processing film and the result exposed directly onto the silkscreen. Rather than digitally translating the stencil into a printable image, Banksy sought to preserve the physical marks of the original process.

That matters particularly for Flower Thrower. An image born from the speed and economy of street stenciling has passed through murals, paintings and prints before becoming a meticulously produced collectible object. Yet the stencil remains embedded in its construction.

There is something wonderfully self-aware about Banksy cutting one of his most recognizable images into pieces precisely at the moment when his imagery had become globally recognizable and extraordinarily valuable.

Flower Thrower Triptych is therefore more than another iteration of Love Is In The Air. It is almost an anatomy lesson in how a Banksy image works. The aggressor, the gesture and the flowers are separated, allowing us to see that none carries the meaning alone. The message exists between them.

Twenty years into his career, Banksy did not need to invent another icon. He could simply take one apart and show us why it worked.