Happy Choppers

Executed in 2006, Happy Choppers is a rare painterly iteration of one of Banksy’s most iconic motifs. One of only three variations, it depicts a squadron of Apache Attack helicopters, or ‘choppers’. Though evocative of scenes from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, the helicopters are adorned with Disney-esque pink bows, transforming them into childlike toys. Juxtaposing menace and innocence with characteristic tongue-in-cheek wit, Banksy calls into question the pretences of military intervention, his surreal image cutting straight to the heart of concerns surrounding contemporary warfare. The motif first appeared at Whitecross Street Market in London in 2002, at a time when Apache helicopters from UK and US forces were particularly prevalent in Afghanistan as part of the global war on terrorism. Today, the motif stands among the artist’s most recognisable in his ongoing dialogue with issues of freedom, peace and justice: another version of the present work was previously owned by the actor Robin Williams, and a further example featured in Banksy’s seminal 2006 exhibition Barely Legal in Los Angeles.

Around the time that Happy Choppers first appeared, Banksy was beginning to make waves internationally through his early graffiti and pranks. Much of his work at this time was anti-war in sentiment, and often appropriated military imagery: the Mona Lisa holding a gun, or a monkey riding a bomb. His iconic ‘flower thrower’ appeared in Beit Sahour near the West Bank Barrier wall, offering a call for peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2003, the present work’s helicopter image would feature as part of the London protests against military action in the middle east, alongside Banksy's ‘bomb hugger’ girl and ‘grin reaper’ motif. Over the years, his work would repeatedly critique the misuse of power by authorities: from his museum interventions that demonised the institutional incarceration of art, to his wry depiction of parliament as a gaggle of chimpanzees.

By the time of the present work, Banksy’s global infamy had reached new heights, bolstered by Barely Legal—his third major exhibition—held in a Los Angeles warehouse. It followed the success of Crude Oils in London the previous year, where Banksy had exhibited a series of reworked masterpieces and vandalised oil paintings in a basement swarming with live rats. The exhibition had highlighted Banksy’s credentials as a painter, demonstrating a virtuosic handling of oil in his appropriations of art history. The show’s title, however, invoked more than just the medium at play, offering a pun on the battle for oil which many believed lay at the heart of the Iraq War. It was significant, in this light, that the series had previously included a reworking of the present work’s motif: a canvas entitled Study for Happy Chopper, which featured a pre-existing painted landscape emblazoned with Banksy’s helicopter. The three versions of the present work, similarly, glisten with tantalising traces of the artist’s hand: notably in the cloud formations, whose shapes vary across the group, calling to mind the Surrealist skies of René Magritte.

Like Richard Prince’s ‘joke’ paintings or Jeff Koons’ seemingly impossible sculptures, the present work revels in its own irony and witticism. On one hand, the helicopters appear like images from a cartoon strip, their girlish pink bows seemingly undercutting the masculine bravado of warfare. On the other hand, the image strikes a more serious tone, highlighting the tension between salvation and harm that defines debates surrounding military intervention. Banksy takes his place within a long line of artists who placed social commentary at the heart of their practice: from William Hogarth to Grayson Perry and Ai Weiwei. More broadly, the present work might be seen in the context of artworks that responded to the onset of war: from Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, to Andy Warhol’s depictions of the atomic bomb, Martin Kippenberger’s Krieg Böse series and Robert Rauschenberg’s inclusion of helicopters in reference to the Vietnam War.

The work’s use of stencilling also plays into Banksy’s anti-establishment rhetoric. The artist first discovered the technique as a teenage graffitist, while hiding from the British transport police under a dumper truck. ‘As I lay there listening to the cops on the tracks I realised I had to cut my painting time in half or give up altogether’, he recalls. ‘I was staring straight up at the stencilled plate on the bottom of a fuel tank when I realised I could just copy that style and make each letter three feet high’ (Banksy, ibid., p. 13). Cut and sprayed by hand, the stencilled elements of the present work lend it a sharp, graphic quality that seems to chime with the crisp humour of Banksy’s message. They also align the painting with his street-based output, creating a seamless blend of urban and studio techniques. Part painting, part protest, the results stand as a powerful expression of the turn-of-the-millennium zeitgeist: its relevance, as with Banksy’s best works, continues to endure today.