Artist 101 | 5 Things to Know About Banksy

Guerrilla artist and global phenomenon, Banksy is one of the most popular and provocative figures in contemporary culture.

In our British. Cool. auction taking place online between 7–16 April, a variety of works by Britain's favourite artist will be going under the hammer. The iconic works will be on view from Sunday 13 April in London, New Bond Street.

Alongside the sale, we trace Banksy's work from the streets of Bristol to breaking records in the auction saleroom.

1.

The Origins and Rise of Banksy

Very little is known for certain about the man behind the moniker ‘Banksy’, but it’s believed that he was born in 1974 in Bristol. It was on the streets of this city that his tag first appeared, as part of the DryBreadZ crew. At the age of 18, his practice was transformed by the discovery of stencilling. With this technique he was able to leave his mark in a fraction of the time it took to paint freehand, allowing him to continually evade the authorities and maintain his anonymity.

In the late 1990s, Banksy ventured beyond Bristol. As his street art appeared in cities across the UK, so his name started appearing in the press. Following his breakthrough exhibition Turf Wars in Hackney in 2003, Banksy quickly became an international sensation. In 2005, his painting of children playing on the West Bank wall in Bethlehem went viral, and the following year his Barely Legal exhibition in Los Angeles turned into a star-studded event.

Banksy continues to surprise with his street art: recently, a stencil of an escaping inmate appeared on the wall of Reading prison in March 2021. And yet throughout decades of notoriety, Banksy has kept his identity concealed. Even his award-winning documentary, Exit Through The Gift Shop (2010), let viewers peek into the underground world of urban art - but offered no such glimpse of the man himself.

Lot 145. Banksy (born 1974), Very Little Helps, 2008. Signed impression. Estimate: £20,000 - £30,000

Lot 143. Banksy (born 1974), Golf Sale, 2003. Signed impression. Estimate £20,000 - £30,000

2. The History of Urban Art

“As soon as I cut my first stencil I could feel the power there”, said Banksy, in a rare interview with the Smithsonian. “All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.”

In the 1960s, artists began using stencils to send messages to vast urban audiences. In France, for instance, one of the first notable stencil works was the silhouette of a nuclear bomb victim: Ernest Pignon-Ernest’s reaction to the Nuclear Strike Force. This technique grew in traction throughout the years: in the 70s, it was adopted by graffiti artist John Fekner who sprayed protest messages onto buildings in New York.

The tradition has continued on both sides of the Atlantic. The influential artist Blek le Rat created a plague of stencilled rats in Paris during the 80s; in the US, Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant became a ubiquitous image of the 90s. In 2018, Banksy paid homage to the art form and its anti-authoritarian heritage with a series of stencil pieces in Paris, marking the anniversary of the May 68 uprising. In his own words, this commemorated "fifty years since the uprising in Paris 1968. The birthplace of modern stencil art."

3. Social and Political Themes

Following the tradition of street art, Banksy’s work conveys messages to a wide audience - messages which often offer scathing social and political commentary. He uses instantly recognisable figures to satirise contemporary concerns, such as Steve Jobs in The Son of a Migrant from Syria (2015) and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz in Stop and Search (2007), to address the paranoia surrounding immigration. Golf Sale, which references the massacre in Tiananmen Square in 1989, praises the heroism of the lone student protesting against tyranny in front of a row of tanks, whilst also satirising Western consumerism.

Similarly, Banksy references and subverts famous artworks: in Show me the Monet (2005), the bucolic landscape is reimagined as a modern-day scene of environmental damage, complete with abandoned shopping trollies and traffic cones.

Banksy has also developed motifs that are synonymous with the artist himself. As demonstrated by Get Out While You Can (Pink), rats are a repeated motif that Banksy uses to represent the underbelly of society, giving visibility to those who are oppressed and overlooked by capitalism. Similarly, children are often symbols of innocence to highlight the absurdity of war.

Banksy’s modes of critique extend beyond the iconic imagery of his street art, paintings and prints. The performative element of his work is itself subversive. In 2003, he took a “shortcut” to getting his work into the Tate Britain: he simply walked in with his work, Crimewatch UK Has Ruined The Countryside For All of Us, and stuck it to the gallery wall.

In 2015, he created the ‘bemusement park’ Dismaland (2015) as a dark parody of Disneyland, an attraction where visitors were forced to confront society’s failures rather than enjoy a day of escapist fantasy. His thought-provoking sculpture Mickey Snake, depicting Mickey Mouse being consumed by a large snake, was first showcased at Dismaland. The artwork serves as a critique of consumerism and the pervasive influence of entertainment giants on culture. One of the rare edition of five Mickey Snake signed sculptures leads our British. Cool. auction this April.

Lot 141. Banksy (born 1974), Mickey Snake, 2015. From the edition of 5, signed on the tail. Estimate: £150,000 - £200,000

Lot 144. Banksy (born 1974), Girl with Balloon, 2004. Estimate: £50,000 - £70,000

4. Banksy at Auction

In 2003, Banksy entered the auction world with a sale of original works and prints at Bonhams. Since then, he has grown into an art market phenomenon, whose immense popularity has increased the interest in street art as a genre, which journalist Max Foster has coined “the Banksy effect” and the demand for his works certainly gained momentum over the next 18 years.

The "Banksy effect" has certainly been witnessed by Bonhams throughout the years, as world records have been broken again and again. In 2007, for instance, Space Girl and Bird sold at Bonhams for £288,000, breaking a world record at the time. More recently, in 2020 the sale of Girl with Balloon in LA for $450,312 broke the record for an unsigned edition of the iconic image. In 2021, Girl with Ice Cream on Palette, a example of Banksy's stencilling style on found material, went on to sell for £1,102,750.

5.

Collecting Banksy

Banksy works available to buy at auction comprise unique works and editions. Unique works regularly sell for six figures, such as Congestion Charge, which was sold for £1,691,900 by Bonhams in 2023.

Editions can be divided into signed prints, unsigned prints, and artist’s proofs, their subjects often iterating the artist’s most iconic images and motifs. When a similar subject exists in multiple editions, the signed editions are more valuable than unsigned, while artist’s proofs command an added premium when they feature hand-painted elements or rare colour variations. Since holding the first-ever auction of Banksy works, Bonhams has continued to sell Banksy prints at world-record prices, whether signed or unsigned. For instance, the signed print of Because I'm Worthless, featuring the iconic Banksy rat, sold for £94,000 in 2021, while the unsigned HMV sold for £62,750 in 2020.

While Banksy’s iconic images have been endlessly reproduced around the world, there are accessible ways to verify that a Banksy is, in fact, a Banksy. In 2008, the artist set up the ‘Pest Control Office’, which issues a certificate of authenticity (COA) when confirming the legitimacy of a work. Pest Control remains, to this day, the sole point of contact for Banksy; quite a feat for an artist who continues to be a towering figure in contemporary art.

Lot 142. Banksy (born 1974), Weston Super Mare, 2003. Estimate: £8,000 - £12,000

Register to bid in British. Cool.

Browse the auction celebrating the dynamism and creativity of British art, fashion, music, and culture from the 20th century up to the present day, taking place between 7–16 April.

Browse auction