This is a list of damaged or destroyed works of guerrilla art created by Banksy, which have been removed from their original locations or otherwise damaged or destroyed. Banksy is an England-based street artist.
Most of the works that make up the October 2013 Better Out Than In series in New York City have been defaced or destroyed, some just hours after the piece was unveiled. [55] [56]
As a result of the continued defacement, fans have been rushing to the sites of the installments as soon as they are announced. [62] A group of men took advantage of this and threatened to deface a stencil painting of a beaver in East New York, charging money for people to take photographs. [63] The continued defacement has prompted some to take matters into their own hands by guarding the works, others restoring them once defaced. [64] Property owners have also gone to some measures to protect the art, including hiring 24-hour guards and installing roll down gates that cover the art. [65]
A framed copy of Girl with Balloon was sold for $1.4 million at a Sotheby's auction in London on 5 October 2018. Immediately after the auction ended, a mechanism hidden in the frame was triggered by remote control and partially shredded the piece. [66] Banksy later explained that he had built the shredder into the painting several years before it went up for auction, [67] and named the new artwork created by the shredding Love is in the Bin .
In the sixth episode the 2021 BBC One/Amazon Prime Video comedy The Outlaws the character Frank, played by Christopher Walken, paints over an image of a stencilled rat sitting on two spray cans signed by Banksy while cleaning a graffiti-covered wall as part of his Community Payback sentence. The BBC have confirmed that the artwork was an original piece created by Banksy for the sitcom, and that it was genuinely destroyed by Walken when he painted over it. [68]
Graffiti is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have appeared on streets, walls, and bridges throughout the world. His work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist and founding member of the musical group Massive Attack.
Street art is visual art created in public locations for public visibility. It has been associated with the terms "independent art", "post-graffiti", "neo-graffiti" and guerrilla art.
Since the 1980s, the area surrounding the Sydney inner west suburb of Newtown, Australia, including the suburbs of Newtown, Enmore, Erskineville, Camperdown and St Peters, has been known for its wide range of prominent graffiti and street art on walls. The public visual art in the Newtown area consists of a variety of styles and methods of execution, including large-scale painted murals, hand-painted political slogans, hand-painted figurative designs, spray painted semi-abstract designs "tags"), and other stylistic developments such as stencil art and street poster art, "Yarn bombing", and sculptural items cast from plaster and other materials.
Melbourne, the capital of Victoria and the largest city in Australia, has gained international acclaim for its diverse range of street art and associated subcultures. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, much of the city's disaffected youth were influenced by the graffiti of New York City, which subsequently became popular in Melbourne's inner suburbs, and along suburban railway and tram lines.
5 Pointz: The Institute of Higher Burnin' or 5Pointz Aerosol Art Center, Inc., mainly referred to as simply 5 Pointz or 5Pointz, was an American mural space at 45-46 Davis Street in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. When the building opened in 1892, it housed the Neptune Meter factory, which built water meters.
Blek le Rat is a French graffiti artist. He was one of the first graffiti artists in Paris, and has been described as the "Father of stencil graffiti".
King Robbo was an English underground graffiti artist. His feud with the artist Banksy was the subject of a Channel 4 television documentary called Graffiti Wars, first shown in August 2011.
Darren Cullen is a London-based professional graffiti artist who is commonly known by the tag name SER. Cullen emerged as an artist from the British graffiti art scene in the early 1980s.
In Russia, graffiti is an ambiguous phenomenon, i.e. considered to be desecration by some, and art by others. It is done for a variety of reasons, including expressing oneself through an art form, or protesting against a corporation or ideology.
Slave Labour is a mural that was painted by a British graffiti artist, Banksy, on the side wall of a Poundland store in Wood Green, London in May 2012. The artwork is 48 inches (122 cm) high by 60 inches (152 cm) wide, and depicts an urchin child at a sewing machine assembling a bunting of Union Jack patches. The work was a protest against the use of sweatshops to manufacture Diamond Jubilee and London Olympics memorabilia in 2012.
Better Out Than In was a residency undertaken by the pseudonymous graffiti artist and political activist Banksy in New York City during October 2013. Banksy unveiled at least one work of art daily, documenting it on both a dedicated website and an Instagram account. The majority of the works were stencil graffiti and chiefly political, a distinctive characteristic of Banksy. Other pieces and multimedia exhibits toyed with dark humor and satire.
Art Buff is a graffiti artwork by Banksy which was created in Folkestone in 2014, Banksy announcing it as "part of the Folkestone triennial. Kind of". The work depicts a woman wearing headphones and staring at a plinth, upon which rests a patch of painted-out graffiti. The name of the piece is a play on words, "buff" being a slang term for the painting over of graffiti.
The Son of a Migrant from Syria is a 2015 mural by graffiti artist Banksy. The mural was located in the Calais jungle, a nickname for the encampment near Calais, France, where migrants lived as they attempted to enter the United Kingdom. The artwork depicts the late Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs—the son of a Syrian migrant to the United States—as a traveling migrant.
The Mild Mild West is a 1999 mural by graffiti artist Banksy, sited on No. 80 Stokes Croft, Bristol. It depicts a teddy bear throwing a Molotov cocktail at three riot police.
Girl with Balloon is a series of stencil murals around London by the graffiti artist Banksy, started in 2002. They depict a young girl with her hand extended toward a red heart-shaped balloon carried away by the wind. The locations for this work include street murals in Shoreditch and the South bank in London on the Waterloo Bridge and other murals were around London, though none remain there.
One Nation Under CCTV was a 2007 mural by graffiti artist Banksy on Newman Street in London. Painted on the wall of a building used by the Royal Mail, it depicts a child in a red hooded top painting the phrase, while being watched by a police officer and a dog. The mural was situated adjacent to a CCTV camera. In 2008, the Westminster City Council ordered the work's removal on the grounds that it was an unlicensed commercial. The mural was painted over in April 2009.
Vaj, also known as Vaj Graff, is a feminist street artist based in Bristol, UK. Active as a feminist graffiti artist since July 2015, her style is similar to Banksy. In January 2016, she controversially added legs and pubic hair to the Queen Victoria statue in College Green, Bristol. This was removed within 24 hours by the local council. Her art has a feminist purpose in an area dominated by men.
Well Hung Lover, also called Naked Man Hanging From Window and simply Naked Man, is a mural by the anonymous street artist Banksy, on a wall in Frogmore Street, Bristol, England.
Girl with a Pierced Eardrum is a 2014 mural by anonymous street artist Banksy, on the wall of a building in Hanover Place, Spike Island, Bristol, England. Appearing overnight on 20 October 2014, it is a parody of Girl with a Pearl Earring, c. 1665 by Johannes Vermeer, instead replacing the pearl earring with an existing security alarm.