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Untitled (Mother and Child), 2003

BY

BANKSY
UNTITLED (MOTHER AND CHILD), 2003
Spraypaint on cardboard with brown tape
104 x 53.5 cm (41×21 inches)

 

Auction History
Sotheby’s London: 24 October 2005
Estimated: GBP 2,000 – 3,000
Price realized: GBP 7,200 / USD 12,825

In Mother and Child, Banksy replaces maternal warmth with a surreal chill. A woman cradles an infant in her arms, both figures dressed in old-fashioned deep-sea diving helmets, rendered in stark black-and-white stencil on a rough cardboard surface. The image evokes intimacy and protection, but also alienation and suffocation. The helmets, symbols of distance, survival, and isolation, turn a universal moment of love into a commentary on the barriers we erect in modern life.

Painted on discarded cardboard and dripping with black paint, the work carries raw immediacy, suggesting fragility: not only of the medium, but of the bond it portrays. Is the mother protecting her child from a toxic world? Or has love itself become so hazardous that we must approach it through layers of defense?

This is Banksy at his most poetic: intimate yet political, human yet post-apocalyptic. A maternal embrace, shielded from a world where even closeness requires armor.

This work, spay-painted onto cardboard, is [art of a number of studies for one of the artist’s very rare artistic and commercial commissions, which culminated in the cover art for the English rock band Blur’s Think Tank album, released in 2003.

Where the album cover depicted an embracing couple, estranged by their diving helmets in a reference to the shrouded lovers in Magritte’s Les Amants, the helmet enclosing the head of the life-sized child in Space Girl and Bird isolates her from her pet – and by extension, from nature in general. The image is closely related in its message of corrupted innocence to a work the artist stenciled in the streets of London of a similarly pony-tailed girl in a gas mask clutching a red flower, which she is unable to smell.
Blur, former art students themselves, sought to align themselves with Banksy because this celebrated graffiti artist, art terrorist and prankster’s often humorous images of discontent encapsulate and satirize the pervasive introversion and alienation current in contemporary British culture. Think Tank is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Blur, released in 5 May 2003. Continuing the jam-based studio constructions of the group’s previous album, the album expanded on the use of sampled rhythm loops and brooding, heavy electronic sounds. There are also heavy influences from dance music, hip hop, dub, jazz and African music. Recording sessions started in November 2001, taking place in London, Morocco and Devon to finish a year later.

Think Tank is a concept album about “love and politics”, associated with the widespread protests against the Iraq war notably. Anti-war themes are recurrent in the album as well as in associated artwork and promotional videos. After leaking onto the internet in March, Think Tank was released on 5 May 2003 and entered the UK Album Chart at number one, making it Blur‘s fifth consecutive studio album to reach the top spot. Think Tank also reached the top 20 in many other countries, including Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Japan. It was their highest charting album in the United States, reaching number 56 on the Billboard 200. The album produced three singles, which charted at number 5, number 18 and number 22 respectively on the UK Singles Chart.

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