"There’s nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place."
—Banksy 

​An icon of the 21st century, Banksy’s Love Is In The Air is one of the artist’s most recognizable images. Evoking the 1960s pacifist slogan “Make Love Not War,” the work is a symbol of peaceful resistance and an ode to spontaneity. Executed in 2002, the present work is from a discrete edition of five canvases Banksy created for his debut exhibition in Los Angeles, Existencillism, at the 33 1/3 Gallery in July 2002. Like Bernini’s David, in Love Is In The Air, a solitary protestor is captured just at the moment before climactic action. However the weapon of choice for Banksy’s figure is a bouquet of flowers. The stenciled image first appeared as graffiti in Jerusalem in 2003 shortly after the erection of the West Bank Wall. One of Banksy’s most sought-after images, Love Is In The Air is quintessential of Banksy’s tongue-and-cheek social critiques expressed through his signature graphic style.

 

Despite the site-specific context of its iteration on the West Bank Wall, Love Is In The Air represents protest without specifying its target, thereby embodying a hint of the punk ethos of non-conformity and perpetual resistance to authority that is typical of the artist’s early graffiti works. Like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Banksy utilizes graffiti as a tool for activism—but for Banksy, the stencil is the driving force. As he expressed, “As soon as I cut my first stencil I could feel the power there. I also like the political edge. All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They’ve been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.”ⁱ

 

Across the various painted iterations of Love Is In The Air, Banksy varies the effect of the spray paint, showcasing different renderings of shadow, blur, and the figure’s bouquet. In the present work, the artist elongates the shadow between the figure’s legs and creates a prominent blurring effect to the image, at once evoking the speed of the protestor’s movement and the nature of memory. Creating a striking visual contrast with the rest of the composition, the touches of bright red allude the color’s dual significations of violence and love, encapsulating Banksy’s message for this iconic image—love as the ultimate weapon.

 

Collector's Digest

 

• Recently in May 2021, Banksy's Love Is In The Air achieved the artist's second highest record at auction, realizing $12,903,000.

 

ⁱ Banksy, quoted in Will Ellsworth-Jones, “The Story Behind Banksy,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2013, online.