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Lot Essay
‘Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint’ - Banksy
Ever since he emerged as a maverick figure in the 1990s Bristol graffiti scene, the enigmatic artist known as Banksy has been a chronicler of his time. His works have engaged with some of the twenty-first century’s most complex issues, offering daring moments of social observation, comedy and critique. He has painted on the West Bank barrier wall and on the streets of Gaza; his art has appeared at the Louvre, the Glastonbury Festival, London’s Southbank and the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. He has taken on giant corporations such as Disney and Tesco; he has reworked Leonardo, Monet and Van Gogh. His works have addressed everything from police brutality, knife crime and political tensions to climate change, consumerism and Brexit. Some—such as the girl hula-hooping with a bicycle wheel that appeared last year outside a beauty salon in Nottingham—have simply brought joy to local neighbourhoods. Underpinning his practice is a belief that art, when dispersed freely among society, has the power to change the world for the better.
Created in 2006, Sale Ends Today plays out Banksy’s irreverent humour on epic scale. Across a vast white canvas more than four metres wide, he uses his trademark stencil technique to depict four kneeling women, who variously pray, collapse or throw up their hands in attitudes of lament. Wearing voluminous robes and veils, they would be at home as mourners in an Old Masterly portrayal of the deposition of Christ. Rather than the messiah, however, the object of the women’s distress is a more secular icon: a large red sign with white block capitals reading ‘SALE ENDS TODAY.’ With this wry parody of art history’s most storied subject matter, Banksy makes a biting comment on contemporary consumerism, which, he implies, rivals the zeal of religious devotion.
Banksy’s incorporation of the ‘sale’ sign transposes to canvas the spirit of his public artworks, which often dialogue or intervene with existing features of the urban environment as a mode of cultural critique. In this sense, the work bears comparison with the Pop art of Andy Warhol, whose depictions of soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles and other American icons—themselves informed by the Catholic imagery of Warhol’s upbringing—likewise recognised that modern society worshipped a new form of idol. Banksy’s striking juxtaposition of the worshipful women and banal text also recalls aspects of the text-based Pop practice of artists such as Ed Ruscha and Barbara Kruger, who destabilise the language of advertising and mass-media by clashing it with sublime imagery or provocatively altering its words. Sale Ends Today is a similarly challenging statement, charged with the quick-thinking visual wit that Banksy honed on the streets of Bristol.
Ever since he emerged as a maverick figure in the 1990s Bristol graffiti scene, the enigmatic artist known as Banksy has been a chronicler of his time. His works have engaged with some of the twenty-first century’s most complex issues, offering daring moments of social observation, comedy and critique. He has painted on the West Bank barrier wall and on the streets of Gaza; his art has appeared at the Louvre, the Glastonbury Festival, London’s Southbank and the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. He has taken on giant corporations such as Disney and Tesco; he has reworked Leonardo, Monet and Van Gogh. His works have addressed everything from police brutality, knife crime and political tensions to climate change, consumerism and Brexit. Some—such as the girl hula-hooping with a bicycle wheel that appeared last year outside a beauty salon in Nottingham—have simply brought joy to local neighbourhoods. Underpinning his practice is a belief that art, when dispersed freely among society, has the power to change the world for the better.
Created in 2006, Sale Ends Today plays out Banksy’s irreverent humour on epic scale. Across a vast white canvas more than four metres wide, he uses his trademark stencil technique to depict four kneeling women, who variously pray, collapse or throw up their hands in attitudes of lament. Wearing voluminous robes and veils, they would be at home as mourners in an Old Masterly portrayal of the deposition of Christ. Rather than the messiah, however, the object of the women’s distress is a more secular icon: a large red sign with white block capitals reading ‘SALE ENDS TODAY.’ With this wry parody of art history’s most storied subject matter, Banksy makes a biting comment on contemporary consumerism, which, he implies, rivals the zeal of religious devotion.
Banksy’s incorporation of the ‘sale’ sign transposes to canvas the spirit of his public artworks, which often dialogue or intervene with existing features of the urban environment as a mode of cultural critique. In this sense, the work bears comparison with the Pop art of Andy Warhol, whose depictions of soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles and other American icons—themselves informed by the Catholic imagery of Warhol’s upbringing—likewise recognised that modern society worshipped a new form of idol. Banksy’s striking juxtaposition of the worshipful women and banal text also recalls aspects of the text-based Pop practice of artists such as Ed Ruscha and Barbara Kruger, who destabilise the language of advertising and mass-media by clashing it with sublime imagery or provocatively altering its words. Sale Ends Today is a similarly challenging statement, charged with the quick-thinking visual wit that Banksy honed on the streets of Bristol.