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1st Edition
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- Artists
- Banksy
 - Edition Details
| Year: | 2001 | | Class: | Original Art | | Status: | Official | | Run: | 1 | | Technique: | Original Mixed Media | | Markings: | Signed |
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Stencil spray paint and acrylic on canvas
Signed in stencil
76 by 76 cm.
29 15/16 by 29 15/16 in.
This work was executed in 2001, and is unique.
This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Pest Control Office.
Exhibited:
Glasgow, The Arches Gallery, Peace is Tough, 2001
London, Cargo, Banksy, 2001
Literature:
Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall, London 2001, n.p., illustrated in colour
Banksy, Wall and Peace, London 2006, n.p., illustrated in colour
Bonhams
Auction 22613:
Post-War and Contemporary Art
12 Feb 2015 17:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street
Sold for £116,500 inc. premium
Corrosive Bird comes from the heart of Banksy's most dynamic period as a studio artist, when the street pieces began to translate into the interior sphere. A formative phase of the artist's career it also coincides with his move from Bristol's hotbed of creative innovation and the birthplace of British Street Art to the London's Metropolis and its greater, international reach. Having been surrounded by figures like 3D (also of Massive Attack fame) and Inky in Bristol, Banksy teamed up in London with Jamie Reid, an artist whose perspective chimed so clearly with his own for the project 'Peace is Tough' at the Arches in Glasgow in 2001. Reid's work for the band The Sex Pistols and his iconic cover for the album Never Mind the Bollocks is the epitome of the punk attitude that was running through the veins of street culture in the early 2000s, and a baton that Banksy has taken on with such verve and authenticity.
The streamlined stencil technique was developed as a direct result of this drive, this endless need to create. The prevailing attitude in Bristol in the early 1990s towards graffiti was as Draconian as the notorious approach of the NYPD on the other side of the Atlantic; participating was not only a creative outlet and an act of defiance, it was a daredevil pastime fraught with huge personal risk. By using a stencil Banksy could prepare in advance and create the image in a matter of seconds and disappear before attracting any attention. Its use has become synonymous with his canvas works such as Corrosive Bird and is the foundation at the heart of his trademark legibility and clarity of message but it was borne simply out of a need to get in and get out without getting caught. What this tends to result in is that his surprisingly sophisticated draughtsmanship is often overlooked or taken for granted. The variation in tone of the bird is almost iridescent and demonstrates a natural fluency with colour and paint. In much the same way as Picasso a century earlier Banksy's approach is built on solid technical foundations which are then stripped back to the cleanest and purest possible form: "All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?" (Banksy) It is only natural then that having proven himself on the street he had no option but to transform his imagery such that it could exist and thrive on canvas and in a new context; never more emphatically so than in Corrosive Bird.
This is an artist whose work is motivated by its message, the clarity of the execution key to its communication to the maximum possible audience. When all you can command is a couple of seconds of attention as eyes wander when walking through the streets of the capital the message needs to be incendiary, visually striking and simple. A committed humanitarian and environmentalist Banksy has used his voice and his unparalleled reach to fight for the causes he most believes in, contributing to organisations including Greenpeace and Leonardo DiCaprio's 11th Hour Foundation. Corrosive Bird can be seen as a melancholic, heartfelt paean to the subjugation of the natural world in the hunt for ever greater development and the thoughtless expansion of industry in areas of natural beauty. The innocence of the hummingbird as it feeds from the toxic beaker recalls the Madonna and Child, an image that he reimagined so viciously with the infant feeding from a bottle marked with a skull and crossbones. Unlike his Madonna though (titled Toxic Mary) this work is categorically unique, an instance almost unheard of in the artist's work. He positioned it himself as being fundamentally important to his oeuvre of the period by featuring it in both Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall, and Wall and Piece, his seminal book documenting the first ten years of his life as a graffiti writer. Unlike many other key images from this period however it has not been reproduced elsewhere: it lives, fragile as the hummingbird feeding for the last time, as distinct, rare and irreplaceable in the artist's mind. The great genius of Banksy's career is his ability to channel his rage through his sense of humour and his clarity of vision. His approach to creating artworks was that they should be tools for his agenda rather than passive items for mere contemplation: "Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realise that reciting red indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking muppet."
― Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall, London 2001
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