Mimesis and Semiotics in the Works of Banksy

Banksy

Banksy started off as a graffiti artist in England in the 1990s and rose to popular fame as a stencil artist when the film Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) appeared in movie theaters (ArtNet, 2021). Banksy was depicted as a renegade, anti-establishment artist whose commercialization was and prosperity was a paradox in and of itself: as a street artist specializing in stencils, his art was typically tied to a public space that defied the conventions of traditional art making. His pictures could be painted over by public works and lost forever—yet somehow his works had managed to penetrate the public consciousness, both because of the appeal of street art in the 1990s and into the 21st century and the anti-establishment message often depicted in his art. Today, Banksy is widely known for a mural painted in Bethlehem, satirizing the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as his Andy Warhol-like pieces that satirize classic works such as Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, which Banksy turned into “Girl with a Pierced Eardrum.” However, it was Exit Through the Gift Shop that enabled Banksy to catapult into celebrity street artist, as the film took a wry and satirical look at what it means to be a legitimate artist in today’s world of mass production, commercialization, and rip-off artists like Mr. Brainwash, who served as the subject of the film. Unlike other modern artists like Jackson Pollock, who specialized in abstract art or Picasso, who mastered many forms suck as cubism, Banksy’s works have been straight-forward street paintings produced using stencils that communicate in an ironic manner something controversial or anti-establishment. Yet, like Pollock and Picasso, Banksy’s unique approach to the art world helped to redefine what it means to be an artist in the modern world and at the same time enabled him to enjoy a certain amount of celebrity and prosperity that he otherwise would not have achieved. Through notoriety and the willingness to challenge the establishment, Banksy became a famous street artist whose random works (no one knows where or when they will pop up) have become a cause of celebration in popular cultural.

One shocking image created by Banksy is called “Napalm” and features Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald on either side of the terrorized girl captured in a Pulitzer Prize winning photo from the Vietnam War.[footnoteRef:2] The photo is a critique on American exceptionalism since it was America’s war in Vietnam that contributed to such conditions as that experienced by the girl. In terms of semiotics, the work uses the symbols of Disney (Mickey Mouse) and fast food pop culture icon Ronald McDonald to juxtapose glib American innocence with the harsh reality of American interventionism abroad. It is an in-your-face anti-establishment work of street art that gets to the heart of what Banksy is all about. Another work that attacks American commercialization is “Christ with Shopping Bags,” which features the crucified Christ holding shopping bags.[footnoteRef:3] It is an attack on the way Christianity and in particular Christian holidays have been commercialized. The symbol of Christianity is ironically upended to attack the establishment once more, only this time it is the consumer culture of the West that is the target. Another image is entitled “Love is in the Air” and features a masked protestor hurling a bouquet of flowers rather than stones or a Molotov cocktail at his target.[footnoteRef:4] The symbol of the protestor is being used here ironically to convey a message about how the wars between groups are really wars between love and hate. [2: https://www.myartbroker.com/artist/banksy/napalm/] [3: https://hexagongallery.com/catalog/artist/banksy/christ-with-shopping-bags/] [4: https://hexagongallery.com/catalog/artist/banksy/love-is-in-the-air/]

Banksy often used religious icons to draw attention to some of the more toxic things that humanity is doing. One work in particular that does this is called “Virgin Mary (Toxic Mary)” and it features a well-known image of Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, only in Banksy’s image he depicts Mary feeding the baby a toxic formula with a bottle labeled with a skull and cross bones—the common symbol for poison.[footnoteRef:5] It suggests that people are poisoning their children with the food they are giving them in this day and age of genetically modified foods and pre-fab culture. Another image that gets to the heart of the West’s obsession with violence, war and death is called “Bomb Love (Bomb Hugger)” and it features a girl hugging a bomb.[footnoteRef:6] The image uses the symbols of youth and innocence (the girl) and deadly force (the bomb) to show how ironic it is that the freedom-loving West should be so enamored of war, bombs and death—which it must be since it is so often bombing other parts of the world into submission. This is the type of art that Banksy routinely creates to draw attention to the hypocrisies of modern culture and to undermine the rhetoric of the establishment. This is why Banksy is an anti-establishment artist, and it is what makes him different from artists like Picasso and Pollock: their art was revolutionary because it defied conventions of art forms up to that point—but Banksy’s art is revolutionary because it defies ideological conventions of the establishment. The fact that it is all street art makes it even more interesting to fans of the artist because he is taking the art directly to the people and forcing them to see it by putting it up on walls in unexpected places. [5: https://hexagongallery.com/catalog/artist/banksy/virgin-mary-toxic-mary/] [6: https://hexagongallery.com/catalog/artist/banksy/bomb-love-bomb-hugger/]