“We are all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us and wealth classified us…”
—Banksy Banksy’s 2004 Toxic Mary renders a sacred Christian archetype in a cartooned monochromatic style, devoid of all holy connotations. The Virgin’s head is piously draped with her traditional cloak while she cradles her infant child, however, our attention is drawn to the poison yellow bottle marked with a skull and cross-bones that feeds the infant Christ. Unlike Banksy’s usual clean-cut stencilled outlines, the illusionistic paint drops seep from the mother and child beyond the paper’s margins; if we wait any longer, their sanctity will all but dissolve into a pool of toxic waste.
In line with the artist’s provocative practice of iconoclastic vandalising of celebrated works, Bansky chose to disfigure one of the most cherished, consecrated images in Western collective memory. Reaching its artistic and dogmatic zenith in the High Renaissance of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth-centuries, the Madonna and Child motif populated visual culture not only as a way to represent the holiest of Christian ideals but as a means for artists to insert themselves into the historical canon and, in turn, challenge the virtuosity of previous technical masters. Giovanni Bellini’s 1480s Madonna and Child, for instance, epitomises the balanced serenity quintessential to Italian Renaissance fashion. Adorned in the traditional blue textile associated with the Virgin, Bellini’s triangular composition situates the Madonna and Child behind a parapet, separated from our everyday world. The delicate shaping of her eyes and mouth bestow her with a curious expression, while her anatomically-perfected hands lift the infant towards the viewer, cupping his flowing hair and soft skin.
Giovanni Bellini, Madonna and Child, late 1480s, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1908, 08.183.1 Banksy’s blasphemous take on the traditional iconography of the Madonna and Child is a not-so-subtle critique of religion as a toxic form of social control. The iconography alludes to fallacy – religion, and thus the Virgin and Child motif, no longer retains the metaphysical stronghold over society that it once did. That the Virgin herself is feeding the Christ child a toxic substance alludes to the portrayal of religion as a poisonous, destructive ideology passed from parent to child through generations.
In the year following the creation of Toxic Mary, Banksy took his sacrilegious critique one step further to appropriate the holiest of holy images: Christ on the Crucifix. His Christ with Shopping Bags removes the venerated cross in replace of pink bow-tied shopping bags, an undoubtable satire on modern commercialism and capitalist consumerism. Banksy’s effective juxtaposition of biblical and pop culture imagery interrogates the disintegration of Christian ideals within Western society, a theme that remains one of his most controversial yet poignant explorations in his contemporary artistic practise.Artist Biography
Banksy
British • 1975 - N/A
Anonymous street artist Banksy first turned to graffiti as a miserable fourteen year old disillusioned with school. Inspired by the thriving graffiti community in his home city, Bristol, Banksy's works began appearing on trains and walls in 1993, and by 2001 his blocky, spray-painted works had cropped up all over the United Kingdom. Typically crafting his images with spray paint and cardboard stencils, Banksy is able to achieve a meticulous level of detail. His aesthetic is clean and instantly readable due to his knack for reducing complex political and social statements to simple visual elements.
His graffiti, paintings and screenprints use whimsy and humour to satirically critique war, capitalism, hypocrisy and greed — with not even the Royal family safe from his anti-establishment wit.
165
Toxic Mary
2004
Screenprint in colours, on wove paper, the full sheet.
S. 69.8 x 49.9 cm (27 1/2 x 19 5/8 in.)
Numbered 70/600 in pencil, an unsigned impression (there was also a signed edition of 150), published by Pictures on Walls, London (with their blindstamp), with the accompanying Certificate of Authenticity issued by Pest Control, framed.
Estimate
£10,000 - 15,000 ♠
Sold for £12,700
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Evening & Day Editions
London Auction 19 - 20 September 2024
407
This lot is no longer available.
