Banksy - Evening & Day Editions London Monday, June 14, 2021 | Phillips

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  • 'If you are dirty, insignificant, and unloved, then the rat is the ultimate role model.' —BanksyIn many ways, the rat exemplifies the spirit of street art: both are vilified, considered capable of compromising the fabric of ordered society, and, despite repeated efforts to eradicate either, extremely prolific. Like the rat, street artists are also at the margins, often active at night to avoid detection whilst also inhabiting a central place within the urban everyday.

     

    The work presented here, Love Rat by famed graffiti artist Banksy, features the animal brandishing a large paintbrush, having just finished painting a red heart. Dripping profusely, the heart is reminiscent of street art’s execution, where an artist might leave a work wet or unfinished to escape arrest. Similarly, the rat is a stencil, another popular graffiti technique which allows one to complete even large-scale works rapidly. Constantly casting a polemic eye on modern society and what the artist views as its many shortcomings, Banksy has commented that ‘if you are dirty, insignificant, and unloved, then the rat is the ultimate role model’.

     

    From an art historical perspective, the rat is considered a symbol of decay, disease and corruption, further reinforced by the animals’ tendency to consume human refuse. Preferring to live closer to densely populated cities for this reason, rats are tied to our existence and may even be seen, despite our collective repulsion, as reflections of ourselves. In Love Rat, Banksy exploits this fundamental insecurity. By anthropomorphising and representing animals often derided by humans, such as rats, monkeys, and urban foxes, the artist forces us to realise that, as animals ourselves, we too are capable of being disgusting, insignificant and spurned.

     

    Crediting his predecessor and ‘Father of Stencil Art’ Blek le Rat, who began tagging stencils of rats across Paris in the early 1980s, as one of his main sources of inspiration, Banksy has returned to this iconography throughout his oeuvre. At the height of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the United Kingdom, the artist tagged a group of rats on the London Underground. As one sneezed and contaminated the carriage, the others playfully used surgical masks as parachutes. During a similar period, Banksy completed a new work which featured a group of rats, stencilled on the wall, running rampant and wreaking havoc in his bathroom.  The caption of the image posted on his official Instagram humorously read ‘My wife hates it when I work from home.’

     

    As with many of Banksy’s works, Love Rat first appeared as a mural on the streets of Liverpool. In 2004, it was reproduced as a limited edition of just 150 signed and 600 unsigned prints. It continues to be considered one of the artist’s foremost prints.

    • Artist Biography

      Banksy

      British • 1975 - N/A

      Anonymous street artist Banksy first turned to graffiti as a miserable fourteen year old disillusioned with school. Inspired by the thriving graffiti community in his home city, Bristol, Banksy's works began appearing on trains and walls in 1993, and by 2001 his blocky, spray-painted works had cropped up all over the United Kingdom. Typically crafting his images with spray paint and cardboard stencils, Banksy is able to achieve a meticulous level of detail. His aesthetic is clean and instantly readable due to his knack for reducing complex political and social statements to simple visual elements.

      His graffiti, paintings and screenprints use whimsy and humour to satirically critique war, capitalism, hypocrisy and greed — with not even the Royal family safe from his anti-establishment wit.

      View More Works

172

Love Rat

2004
Screenprint in colours, on wove paper, with full margins.
I. 35.5 x 29 cm (13 7/8 x 11 3/8 in.)
S. 39.4 x 34.5 cm (15 1/2 x 13 5/8 in.)

Signed, dated '05' and numbered 90/150 in pencil (there was also an unsigned edition of 600), published by Pictures on Walls, London (with their blindstamp), with the accompanying Certificate of Authenticity issued by Pest Control, framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£70,000 - 90,000 

Sold for £94,500

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Anne Schneider-Wilson

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Evening & Day Editions

London Auction 14 - 15 June 2021