“They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not good enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it.” They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

“They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.”

“Flower Thrower”The image is reminiscent of those seen during the 1960s campus and street riots. There is anger and frustration in the posture of the man, bombing the establishment with flowers. The flowers themselves, done in color, show a hope for peaceful resolution of our conflicts.

"In the bad old days, it was only popes and princes who had the money to pay for their portraits to be painted, this is a portrait of a maid called Leanne who cleaned my room in a Los Angeles motel. She was quite a feisty lady."

visual artifacts critiquing societies’ values and beliefs

Banksy characteristics:

• Uses prominent themes, relating to human behavior, politics, social concerns and other controversial topics.

• Often filled with satire or irony

• Use of symbolism and iconography

• Satire: a way of using humor to show that someone or something is foolish, weak, bad, etc. : humor that shows the weaknesses or bad qualities of a person, government, society, etc.

• Irony: the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

• Iconography: the science of identification, description, classification, and interpretation of symbols, themes, and subject matter in the visual arts. The term can also refer to the artist’s use of this imagery in a particular work.

“The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill”

“wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming”

The numerous rats that Banksy scatters around the world are important to his main anti-capitalistic outlook on life because of what they symbolize for Banksy – the average, working class man. Banksy tries to show the lack of respect that people of that stature get as a working-class citizen with his repetition of the rat figure throughout London and other parts of the world.

The image hearkens back to one’s childhood idealism; the dreams of a child who wishes he could fly and float away as if lighter than air.

• The plight of the Palestinian appears in the art piece, the desire for freedom, the yearning to be able to float over the West Bank’s walls.

To be sold at auction…$300,000

“Sirens of the Lambs”