WRONG WAR, 2004

Catalogue Note

Created in 2004, Wrong War is one of Banksy's most explicit anti-war images from the period surrounding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A hooded Grim Reaper grips his traditional scythe, but the expected skull has been replaced by an absurdly cheerful yellow smiley face. Beneath him, the words WRONG WAR appear in roughly applied red lettering, their long drips introducing an unmistakable suggestion of blood.

The collision is quintessential Banksy. Death has been given the visual language of happiness. The ubiquitous smiley—a symbol of optimism transformed by popular culture into an almost meaningless commercial graphic—turns the Reaper into a grotesquely cheerful mascot. Violence is not hidden; it is simply repackaged.

The image belongs to Banksy's particularly intense engagement with the anti-war movement of the early 2000s. In 2003, as Britain prepared to participate in the invasion of Iraq, Banksy produced placards for the massive anti-war demonstrations in London, including variations combining military or death imagery with the yellow smiley face. Wrong War translates that language of street protest into an editioned work on paper.

Its title is deliberately blunt. Banksy does not offer a complicated geopolitical argument. WRONG WAR reads like a protest placard precisely because that is the visual culture from which the image emerged. The red lettering, black stencil and crude drips preserve something of the immediacy of something designed to be carried through a crowd rather than contemplated politely on a gallery wall.

Pax Britannica: A Hellish Peace

Wrong War was produced as part of Pax Britannica: A Hellish Peace, an unusual portfolio published by Aquarium Gallery, London, bringing together politically engaged works by a number of contemporary artists. The portfolio comprised 22 prints employing different techniques and papers, presented together in a black portfolio box, with the individual works issued in editions of 100.

Banksy's contribution is particularly distinctive. Rather than one of the larger commercial screenprints for which he would soon become famous, Wrong War is an intimate A4-sized digital print on grey card, measuring only 29.7 × 21 cm. Its modest dimensions reinforce its relationship to political ephemera—leaflets, posters, flyers and protest material designed to circulate ideas rather than proclaim themselves precious objects.

The edition of 100 signed examples also makes Wrong War considerably scarcer than most of Banksy's principal print editions of the period. More importantly, its origin within a collaborative political portfolio gives it a very different history from works originally distributed through Pictures on Walls.

The Grim Reaper would continue to occupy Banksy's imagination. It appeared famously on the side of Bristol's Thekla and later evolved into other manifestations, culminating in the extraordinary Brace Yourself! and the kinetic bumper-car incarnation presented during Better Out Than In in New York in 2013. Across these works, Banksy repeatedly strips Death of its traditional solemnity and makes it ridiculous.

In Wrong War, however, the joke remains particularly dark. The smiling face does not make Death less frightening. It makes the people sending him to work look more absurd.