BANKSY
Love is in the Air, 2006
Oil and spray paint on canvas
91.4 x 91.4 cm (36×36 inches)
Tagged on the turnover edge
Signed Banksy 5/15 and dated 24/4/2006 on the reverse
Provenance
Lazarides Ltd, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2006
Sotheby’s Hong-Kong: 27 April 2022
HKD 51,273,000
Source: Sotheby’s
Banksy 班克斯 | Love is in the Air 愛在空氣中 | Contemporary Evening Auction | | Sotheby’s (sothebys.com)
One of Banksy’s most celebrated works on canvas, Love is in the Air (2006), is further distinguished by the inclusion of hand-painted flowers in oil. An archetypal example of Banksy’s perceptive and stimulating commentaries on contemporary political and social events, Love is in the Air is one of the most recognizable works by the brilliant graffiti artist and offers a simple message of hope. In the tradition of other historically iconic images that preceded it, such as Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Warhol’s Marilyn or Alfred Leete’s Lord Kitchener Wants You poster, Love is in the Air has been imitated and replicated countless times in a testament to its visual strength and power. It is indisputable that this bold and powerful work helped to establish Banksy’s place in art history, cementing his reputation as a pivotal and universally heard artistic voice.
Testament to the importance of the work and the power of its imagery—in which a masked figure of a militant stands poised to hurl a bouquet of flowers into the air—the original street intervention of Love is in the Air, was sprayed onto a wall in Palestine, and was chosen to illustrate the front cover of Banksy’s 2005 monograph Wall and Piece. The imagery of Love is in the Air is also illustrated within the book, accompanied by a passage on the toppling of the regime of President Ceausescu of Romania as told by John Simpson for BBC News. The work shares its title with the 1978 hit song by John Paul Young. Emblematic of Banksy’s wit, satire and dark humor, the title is expressive of the positive message of the work, that being the call for peace. Banksy’s iconic flower thrower has become synonymous with the artist’s thought-provoking oeuvre, a powerful image expressing the absurdity of war and the artist’s vocal advocacy for peace.
An activist for peace, Banksy is known for his striking, tongue-in-cheek street art and compelling images that disseminate his anti-war sentiments. Militarism, war and the overall advocacy for peace are key themes that Banksy explores throughout his oeuvre, juxtaposing symbols of peace with images of violence to intrigue the viewer and startle them from passivity. This can be seen in many of the artist’s most important graffiti works, particularly in those executed in the early 2000s, from the image of Mona Lisa holding a rocket launcher which appeared on a wall in Soho in 2001, to the little girl that cradles a missile in Banksy’s iconic Bomb Hugger and the banana-wielding protagonists of the artist’s Pulp Fiction. In Love is in the Air, Banksy’s masked subject adopts the pose of a violent protester, moments away from hurling his weapon into the air towards an unseen enemy.
A PEACEFUL PROTESTOR OFFERS A FLOWER TO THE MILITARY POLICE AT THE ANTI-VIETNAM WAR PROTEST AT THE PENTAGON IN OCTOBER 1967
However, Banksy takes the viewer by surprise, including a bouquet of flowers where the viewer would expect to see a weapon, such as a hand-grenade, brick or bomb. The inclusion of a bouquet of flowers recalls the flower power movement and student protests in the United States and France in the 1960s, and the iconic images of young men and women meeting guns with flowers that have memorialized these events in popular memory. During the protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, flowers became symbols of passive resistance and methods of non-violence, opposing the war and the atrocities it caused. With Love is in the Air, Banksy campaigns for peace rather than war, and evokes the notion of civil disobedience, highlighting the notion that weapons are not necessarily needed to achieve political or social change, and change can be achieved through non-violent means.
BANKSY, WALLED OFF HOTEL, PALESTINE, 2017 © BANKSY
The imagery of Love is in the Air first appeared on the side of a garage in Beit Sahour, a Palestinian town east of Bethlehem, close to the Israeli West Bank Barrier. A 708 kilometre wall controlled by a series of checkpoints and observation towers, the Israeli West Bank Barrier separates Israel from the West Bank territories of Palestine. Banksy executed a number of graffiti works on the wall shortly after its construction in 2002, emphasising the perceived social and political injustice in the region and the effects of terrorism and militarism. Banksy is very active in the region, dedicated in his mission to demonstrate the militarism and division caused by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many works by the artist have popped up in Gaza and the West Bank since the mid-2000s, and in 2017, Banksy opened The Walled Off Hotel alongside the Barrier Wall in Bethlehem, selling it as having “the worst view of any hotel in the world” (the artist quoted in Emma Graham-Harrison, “‘Worst view in the world’: Banksy opens hotel overlooking Bethlehem wall”, The Guardian, 3 March 2017, online).
The radiant, hand-painted flowers of Love is in the Air are a unique feature of this work. It is uncommon in Banksy’s oeuvre to see the use of hand-painted oil paint and stenciled spray paint coexist within the same image, and here, Banksy’s choice of medium enhances the message of the work and the juxtaposition of violence with peace. In Love is in the Air, the softness of the artist’s delicately painted flowers contrasts with the graphic sharpness of his signature stenciled spray-painted figure. The bright, chromatic colors of the flower arrangement instantly command the viewer’s attention and engage them in the artist’s advocacy for peace. Banksy is well known for his distinctive use of stenciling, a technique he started using widely in the late 1990s in order to create complex graffiti works very rapidly in public spaces. The use of stenciling allowed the artist to reduce the window in which he risked being caught ‘vandalizing’ by the police, but without compromising the intricacy of the images. Banksy’s choice of stenciling as a technique has significance beyond pragmatic considerations: the practice has long been associated with underground political movements and punk culture, as it enables people to create visually striking images that can be reproduced quickly, cheaply and by anyone. These characteristics lend the technique to grassroots activism and speak to the DIY, anti-establishment, traditions of punk.
EUGENE DELACROIX, LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE, 1830, LOUVRE MUSEUM, PARIS
Executed in 2006, Love is in the Air was created after Banksy’s foray into oils in his series of vandalized oil paintings, Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin (2005), a departure from his signature street interventions and archetypal graffiti using spray paint and stencils. The incorporation of these richly painted flowers also brings to mind the long tradition of floral still life paintings; yet in typical Banksy fashion, these vivid blooms are a far cry from the somber beauty of a 17th century Dutch floral arrangement, or indeed the symbolic incorporation of flowers by Medieval, Renaissance and Victorian artists, but rather appear as if they may have been snatched from a local gas station to be hurled at an unseen enemy.
With works such as Love is in the Air, Banksy joins an important lineage of artists who have used their art to comment on pressing political and social issues, from Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, created after the July Revolution of 1830 as a symbol for liberty and democracy; to Andy Warhol’s use of stencils to subvert often highly political images from popular culture, as seen in Race Riot from 1964; and the many artists who have taken to the streets to disseminate their message for the world to see. The imagery of Love is in the Air has been frequently reproduced in popular culture, making this work an important, highly-sought after example from the illustrious street artist’s compelling, thought-provoking oeuvre. Today, the powerful message of Love is in the Air remains as pertinent as ever.