A Banksy bonanza: six screenprints and ‘a hand-made tool with a happy ending’

NOLA (Green Rain)

In 2008, three years after Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on Louisiana, Banksy painted some 14 murals around New Orleans, taking aim at politicians’ inadequate efforts to protect the city, and then to repair the damage. Among them was NOLA, a picture that takes its title from the city’s sobriquet and depicts a girl being rained on from inside her umbrella.

‘While Banksy never comments on his work’s meaning, people tend to agree that this image is a nod to New Orleans’s failed flood defences,’ says Christie’s senior Prints and Multiples specialist James Baskerville.

Months later, Banksy released the first NOLA print, which featured white rain, in an edition of 289 — a reference to the age of the city, which was founded in 1718. This was followed by an edition of 63 prints featuring grey rain, 32 with orange rain and — the rarest edition, to which this print belongs — green rain, of which there were 31. There were also 66 artist’s proofs issued with multicoloured rain.

Choose Your Weapon (Sky Blue)

‘This barking-dog motif is borrowed from the work of fellow graffiti artist Keith Haring, whose chalk drawings on the New York subway in the 1980s took the visual vernacular of street art into galleries,’ says Baskerville. ‘It’s an image where American and English street cultures collide, and pays homage to the father figure of the entire street art movement.’

Choose Your Weapon was initially stencilled on a London wall in 2010, then a print was issued shortly after. To date, it’s been created in at least 18 different colourways, including a grey edition called Queue Jumping that was released to fans who had missed out at the initial sale.

‘Like all the Banksy works sold by Christie’s, this print is issued with its crucial certificate of authenticity, which comes from Banksy’s studio, Pest Control,’ adds Baskerville.

Kate Moss: Purple, Hair Orange

In 2005, Banksy riffed on Andy Warhol’s famous series of images depicting Marilyn Monroe, which first appeared in 1962, following the actress’s premature death.

Adopting Warhol’s appropriation of a photograph of Monroe taken by Gene Korman, Banksy printed multiples of the face of supermodel Kate Moss — one of the most photographed women of his own generation. And in a nod to his predecessor, he swapped Moss’s hairdo for Monroe’s iconic curls.

‘After the original colourway, on a light-blue background, Banksy produced six more colourways of this screenprint, each in an edition of 20,’ explains Baskerville. ‘This edition is brightly coloured, from a small run of just 20 and signed by the artist — all factors that increase the desirability of Banksy prints.’

In 2011, it was rumoured that Banksy had created a unique version of the artwork as a wedding gift for Moss, surprising her by having it installed in the bathroom of her hotel during her honeymoon.

Flower Thrower Triptych (Grey)

In 2019, Banksy evolved one of his most recognisable motifs — an anti-war image of a protester throwing a bunch of flowers — into a triptych.

‘The edition of 300 sets of three screenprints on micron board were sold through Banksy’s short-lived homeware brand, Gross Domestic Product,’ explains the specialist. ‘The brand was debuted to the public in a showroom in south London, and sold through a website that the artist created in response to a trademark dispute with a greeting cards company that sought to use his artworks.’

Prices for the various artworks and objects started from just £10, and customers were invited to sign up for the chance to buy pieces by submitting a 50-word answer to the question, ‘Does art matter?’

Girl with Balloon

Undoubtedly Banksy’s best-known image, Girl with Balloon was voted the UK’s favourite artwork in 2017, trouncing pictures by Hockney, Constable and Turner.

The motif first appeared as a mural sprayed on a shop in east London in 2002. Months later, it reappeared a few miles away on Waterloo Bridge, with the added words, ‘There is always hope’.

Since then, Banksy has repurposed Girl with Balloon multiple times: in 2014, he projected it onto monuments including Nelson’s Column and the Eiffel Tower to draw attention to the conflict in Syria; in 2017, prior to the UK general election, the balloon was given the colours of the Union Jack; and in 2018, a version famously shredded itself in front of a live audience via a mechanical device hidden inside its frame.

‘This print belongs to the edition issued in 2004 as a signed print run of 150. There was also an unsigned edition of 600,’ says Baskerville. The signed version was originally priced at £150, while the unsigned edition was £75. In 2020, an artist’s proof of the print with a purple balloon realised £791,250.

‘As with any other artwork, strong provenance can increase the demand for a Banksy print,’ says Baskerville. ‘This print, together with two others in the sale, Jack and Jill (Police Kids) and Toxic Mary, are from the collection of Martyn Reed, who was an early collector of the artist. This impression of Girl with Balloon has been in his collection since 2006. He’s also the founder of Nuart, the world’s first street art festival, which launched in Stavanger, Norway, in 2001, and in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 2017.’

Axe

‘Axe was another work sold through Gross Domestic Product,’ says Baskerville. ‘It was the result of a rare collaboration, undertaken with the Spanish street artist Escif, who mainly paints around Valencia. It’s from a signed edition of just 10, and has never appeared at auction before.’

Borrowing Marcel Duchamp’s concept of the ‘readymade’, the pair of artists subverted the meaning of an object: the axe was advertised on the Gross Domestic Product website with a caption stating that it was made of polymer resin, ‘so not much good for actually chopping wood’.

The text went on to describe how the sculpture was a ‘hand-made tool with a happy ending’, in reference to the flower blooming from its handle — a tool for destruction becoming a source of life.

Morons (Sepia)

Morons is based on a photograph showing the moment Van Gogh’s Sunflowers achieved a record hammer price of £22,500,000 at Christie’s in 1987.

Using the image to highlight the irony that his anti-capitalist-themed work was being embraced by the art establishment, Banksy swapped the painting for a canvas with the words ‘I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit’ scrawled across it.

The image debuted as an edition at Banksy’s three-day exhibition Barely Legal, which took place in September 2006 in a Los Angeles warehouse. The LA Edition has a gold frame around the canvas, and was printed in a signed edition of 150 and an unsigned edition of 500. The following year, Banksy’s UK-based print studio, Pictures on Walls, reissued it in monochrome and sepia editions. ‘This print is number five from the edition of 300 signed sepia prints,’ notes Baskerville.

Spanning five centuries of printmaking, this season’s Prints and Multiples auctions are now on view at Christie’s in London. Prints and Multiples is live for bidding until 27 March 2025, and Contemporary Edition: London until 1 April