Banksy

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Colours: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate although the overall tonality is softer and more vibrant in the original. Condition: This work is in good original condition as per the catalogue illustration. There is scattered paint lifting in places throughout the door which is inherent to the artist's choice of medium, these can be easily stabilised by a professional conservator. No restoration is visible when examined under ultra-violet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Banksy, Faile and Street Art

How do you define Street Art? As a phenomenon it resists easy 'isms' and does not operate according to a code; graffiti, stencilling, cut-outs, sculpture, fine art, graphic design, performance all fall into this paradigm in an amorphous morass, all connected by one inspiration: the street. As such, Street Art is not a movement, it is a groundswell born in the USA in the late 1970's as the visual manifestation of the hip-hop movement alongside the music and break-dancing. Since then it has branched out to encompass all aspects of urban culture and crossed over to enrich the gallery dominated art scene that had held sway for much of the 20^th Century. Having started as a rudimentary and entirely lyrical way of marking territory and ontologically announcing 'TAKI 183 was here', intense competition encouraged writers to develop their tags into 3-D symbols and ultimately into pictures. With the advent of graphic design, contemporary street art has evolved to embrace artists with wildly differing backgrounds, including the collective Faile. Consisting of three original members (Patrick McNeil, Patrick Miller and Aiko Nakagawa) Faile cherry-picked images from across the range of popular culture, interweaving them with their own sexualised, fantastical iconography. Drawing heavily from 'Subvertising' and culture jamming by manipulating brands and existing poster designs then wheat-pasting them up in the urban environment 'ready-made', Faile were able to fly voluptuous, intricate and highly finished pieces in a fraction of the time needed to execute the traditional 'throw-up'; "We work similarly to the way DJs make music. We sample different things from newspapers, comics, signage, photos, books, the street, etc. We bring them all together, taking bits from this and pieces from that and create something new from what was there." (Faile quoted in Swindle Magazine, issue 12)

Similar pragmatic concerns lie behind the development of stencilling as an alternative to writing and graffiti. Pioneered by the French artist Blek Le Rat in the 1980s, the stencil unlocked the potential of the spray can as an artistic tool in an environment where speed was directly related to success. This mantle has most conspicuously been taken on by Banksy whose biting sense of humour allied with an exquisite economy of design and visual articulacy have captured the zeitgeist of the post Berlin Wall generation. Banksy's tongue in cheek attacks on celebrity and vitriolic, fearless ambushing of both Western foreign policy and mega-brands speak to us in the language of today; as a new wave of collectors look to the art market to exteriorise the hopes and fears of a generation these artists oblige via a cocktail of intuition, gallows humour and cultural relevance. As a result, yesterday's vandalism has become today's hot property; Banksy remains incognito to hide from the paparazzi where once it was to evade the police. The irony is that today's moral compass and aesthetic benchmarks can be found blinking at us from the decrepit walls of Old Street and Whitechapel rather than the rarified walls of the Royal Academy or the Tate. This, however, gets to the heart of the appeal of street art; the dialectic can include the mysterious and achingly powerful Brooklyn 'writings' of José Parla alongside Banksy's Palestine wall murals that howl at the injustice of these intellectual, racial and social barriers: there is room for both beauty and the beast in Street Art, in fact their collaboration is crucial. As such, Sotheby's are delighted to be offering a range of important works by Banksy and Faile as indicative of this new wave of artists that have come to revolutionise the Contemporary Art scene.