.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Acquired directly from the artist the year it was made, Love Rat (White Border) (2002) is one of the few original and unique stencil paintings by Banksy to feature a rat. Instantly recognisable, the rodent's monochrome silhouette is finely detailed with a whiskered nose, long pointed teeth and curved tail. Standing on its hind legs, it wields a small paintbrush in its paw and seems to have just made a gestural mark of its own—the crude, freshly painted outline of a love heart. One of his favourite and most prolific subjects, the rat has appeared in Banksy’s work in more than thirty different iterations since the early 2000s: Gangsta Rat, Placard Rat, Radar Rat, and Paparazzi Rat to name a few. As one of the earliest, Love Rat holds a prestigious rank within the colony. It appeared in situ as a mural in Liverpool, and would later be chosen as the first of the artist's series of rat prints to be released in 2004, promoted as the perfect gift for a cheating spouse. Regarded as pests and carriers of disease, this rat’s offering of love—blood-red and dripping—is offset with a characteristically derisive twist.
As with all of the artist’s most iconic works, Love Rat casts a shrewd and satirical commentary on contemporary socio-politics. Implying a sleazy underbelly to romantic love, the rat has also been used as an extended visual metaphor for the unremitting ‘rat race’ of late-capitalist city life. Banksy’s first stencilled rats appeared in his self-published book Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall (2001). Brandishing workers’ tools—shovels, drills, saws, and spanners—they are often depicted up to no good, interfering with public property among other delinquent activities. ‘Like most people I have a fantasy that all the little powerless losers will gang up together’, the Bristol-born artist wrote in the same year as the work. ‘That all the vermin will get some good equipment and then the underground will go overground and tear this city apart’ (Banksy, Existencilism, England 2002, p. 19). His rats also pay homage to French street artist Blek Le Rat. Born Xavier Prou in 1952, and painting in Paris since the early 1980s, he is widely credited as the inventor of the life-sized stencil. Using ‘rat’ for his alias—an anagram for ‘art’—he had famously pronounced them ‘the only free animal in the city’ (J. Reiss, ‘Blek Le Rat’, Swindle, Issue 11, 2007, n.p.). Some of Banksy’s own original street rats can still be seen on Tooley Street and Chiswell Street in London.
Throughout his career, the artist has depicted a vivid arsenal of anthropomorphic animal protagonists—monkeys, gorillas, pandas and leopards—each offering parodic comparisons to the human race. It is the common rodent in particular that Banksy adopts as a metaphor for himself. Much like the rat, the street artist emerges from the underground to work under the cover of night. Both are hunted by local council authorities for their ‘unclean’ and unwanted acts of vandalism. Here, Love Rat’s implied activities are both transgressive and romantic. The work comes from what was a highly experimental and significant period in Banksy’s early career. Just a year later he would present his first major solo exhibition in an abandoned warehouse in East London, and begin his series of museum pranks, most famously entering Tate Britain in disguise to hang one of his own artworks on the gallery wall. ‘It is tempting to see 2002 as the formative year for Banksy’, Xavier Tapies has said, ‘a year in which we see him developing such a broad range in his art, with many themes set, to which he would return in subsequent years’ (X. Tapies, Where’s B**ksy?, Berkeley 2016, p. 18).
As with all of the artist’s most iconic works, Love Rat casts a shrewd and satirical commentary on contemporary socio-politics. Implying a sleazy underbelly to romantic love, the rat has also been used as an extended visual metaphor for the unremitting ‘rat race’ of late-capitalist city life. Banksy’s first stencilled rats appeared in his self-published book Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall (2001). Brandishing workers’ tools—shovels, drills, saws, and spanners—they are often depicted up to no good, interfering with public property among other delinquent activities. ‘Like most people I have a fantasy that all the little powerless losers will gang up together’, the Bristol-born artist wrote in the same year as the work. ‘That all the vermin will get some good equipment and then the underground will go overground and tear this city apart’ (Banksy, Existencilism, England 2002, p. 19). His rats also pay homage to French street artist Blek Le Rat. Born Xavier Prou in 1952, and painting in Paris since the early 1980s, he is widely credited as the inventor of the life-sized stencil. Using ‘rat’ for his alias—an anagram for ‘art’—he had famously pronounced them ‘the only free animal in the city’ (J. Reiss, ‘Blek Le Rat’, Swindle, Issue 11, 2007, n.p.). Some of Banksy’s own original street rats can still be seen on Tooley Street and Chiswell Street in London.
Throughout his career, the artist has depicted a vivid arsenal of anthropomorphic animal protagonists—monkeys, gorillas, pandas and leopards—each offering parodic comparisons to the human race. It is the common rodent in particular that Banksy adopts as a metaphor for himself. Much like the rat, the street artist emerges from the underground to work under the cover of night. Both are hunted by local council authorities for their ‘unclean’ and unwanted acts of vandalism. Here, Love Rat’s implied activities are both transgressive and romantic. The work comes from what was a highly experimental and significant period in Banksy’s early career. Just a year later he would present his first major solo exhibition in an abandoned warehouse in East London, and begin his series of museum pranks, most famously entering Tate Britain in disguise to hang one of his own artworks on the gallery wall. ‘It is tempting to see 2002 as the formative year for Banksy’, Xavier Tapies has said, ‘a year in which we see him developing such a broad range in his art, with many themes set, to which he would return in subsequent years’ (X. Tapies, Where’s B**ksy?, Berkeley 2016, p. 18).