BANKSY // PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST, 1998

  • Banksy’s 1998 Portrait of an Artist features minimalist satirical sketch, early conceptual graffiti style.
    Banksy, Portrait of an Artist, 1998.
    Oil on canvas, 100 × 141 cm. Stencilled signature lower left.
    © Banksy.
    Portrait of an Artist is believed to be the first canvas Banksy created for sale, marking a pivotal step from the streets to the gallery wall. The work turns the traditional painter-and-muse relationship on its head. At first glance, a classically dressed artist appears to be painting a nude study, but his model is no ordinary figure. Instead, a strange, alien-like creature strikes a confident pose in front of rich red curtains.
     
    The humour comes in the dissonance: while the creature holds the stage, the artist’s canvas shows only a textbook human body. Banksy uses this disconnect to poke fun at perception and bias, asking whether we ever truly see what is in front of us, or only what we’re conditioned to expect. Both witty and subversive, Portrait of an Artist stands as an early statement of Banksy’s irreverence toward tradition and his refusal to take art at face value.
     
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  • "Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

    - Banksy

    Created in 1995, Portrait of an Artist is a unique spray-paint and acrylic on canvas measuring 65 by 50 cm. The composition shows a suited painter at his easel, brush in hand, working from a nude model. Yet the model is not human but a cartoonish, alien-like figure set against a backdrop of red curtains. Banksy contrasts the bizarre form of the sitter with the idealised human figure reproduced on the easel, highlighting the artist’s ability to twist visual expectation into satire. As one of his earliest canvases made for sale, the piece demonstrates Banksy’s early command of irony, parody, and traditional art-historical references.
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