The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Banksy · a stencilled image scored as one work in its versions: the wall stencil on the steps up to Waterloo Bridge, South Bank, London, 2002, with the words “There is always hope” lettered beside it, a related wall version in Shoreditch, and the screenprint editions and canvases · spray paint through a stencil, in black with one red · by a pseudonymous English artist whose identity is not confirmed · the first wall not known to stand; the image whole in its prints and canvases · Love Is in the Bin, the canvas shredded in 2018, a separate work
Mode
Street stencil passed into print and canvas; an emblem of sentiment in two values
Mythos
The child and the lost thing; the heart leaving the body; the balloon as the soul going up; evoked at the level of the emblem, not built
Phase
First sprayed on a London stair in 2002, then repeated in prints and canvases; twenty-four years at the time of reading
Presentation
Stencil in black with one red, on a wall, on paper and on canvas; the first wall lettered with a line of words the prints omit; dimensions not given
Register
Tender and soft-spoken; one pang at a red shape going up and away, without terror or grandeur
Scale
One figure, one balloon, one string, one gap and, on the first wall, one line of words; a child at eye level
Governing Proposition
A girl in black, with no face, leans toward a red heart-shaped balloon whose string has just left her hand, or has just escaped it. First sprayed in 2002 on the public steps to Waterloo Bridge, with the words “There is always hope” beside it, and repeated since in prints and canvases, the image puts the whole of its meaning in one gap and one colour. The wager is that a single relation, held open between release and loss, can carry the oldest statement there is about love and innocence, and carry it to anyone who passes, at the speed of a sign.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
In 2002 a stencil was sprayed on the wall of the steps that lead up to Waterloo Bridge from the South Bank in London: a girl in black, and a red balloon in the shape of a heart drifting away from her on its string. Beside it were lettered the words “There is always hope”. It was unsigned and illegal, made quickly through a cut stencil, and it was put where people pass rather than where they stop: on a public stair, at eye level, for whoever climbed by.
The maker is the pseudonymous English artist Banksy, whose identity has not been confirmed. The image belongs to a body of stencil work that came out of the British graffiti and poster culture of the 1990s and, before that, out of the stencils of Paris in the 1980s, above all those of Blek le Rat, whose debt Banksy has acknowledged. That body is known for the rat, the joke and the political sting. This image turned it toward tenderness.
The image did not stay on its wall. A related version was painted on a wall in Shoreditch, and the image passed into screenprint editions and into canvases, in which it stands whole. The first wall is not known to survive where it was painted. What went with it is small for a stencil made to be repeated, and it is not nothing: the stair, the passer-by and the words were part of what the image first meant.
Movement II
The image has five parts: one figure, one balloon, one string, the gap between the hand and the string, and, on the first wall, one line of words. The prints carry four. Everything is in two values. The girl and the string are black. The balloon is red, and the red is the only colour in the image.
The stencil makes a silhouette, so the girl has no face. Her dress, her hair and her stance are the conventions any girl in silhouette would supply; she is less a person than a place where any viewer may stand. The colour is withdrawn from her and given to the thing that is leaving her, so the eye goes where the meaning is, and the heart, red and heart-shaped, is a sign before it is a balloon.
The cutting is clean, and the image reads at a distance, the first demand on anything sprayed on a wall. The girl leans with her weight forward; her hair and her skirt lift as if in the same wind that takes the balloon, so that figure and balloon share one movement. The drift of the balloon upward and to the side turns a flat wall into a small space of distance and of time.
Movement III
Everything turns on a gap. The girl’s hand is lifted, and the string is not in it. Close the gap and there is a child holding a balloon, a picture of possession. Open it and the picture is of loss, or of letting go, and it is not possible to say which. The tilt of the body serves both: she may have just released the string, or just failed to catch it. The same gesture carries the two readings, and the image never settles between them.
The string is the best line in the image, a curve slack and drawn up at once, as if it still felt the hand it has left. Between the black of the figure and the red of the heart it is the one connection, and at its lower end it connects to nothing. Without the red the heart would be a grey shape with no pull on the eye; without the gap there would be nothing to lose.
What the image says can be said in a sentence, and it is the oldest sentence: love, or innocence, or hope, is held for a moment and goes. The child and the lost thing, the heart leaving the body, the balloon going up like a soul: these patterns are summoned at a glance and left as they are found. The image is grasped whole at first sight, and the second look finds the same gap and the same red. Its effect is a pang, real and reliable, the same at the hundredth meeting as at the first.
Movement IV
On the stair the words turned the image toward consolation. A child’s loss, painted without permission on a public way, was offered to strangers with a line of hope beside it. Whoever climbed past was the viewer it was made for; there was no gallery, no price and no name.
In the prints the words are dropped, and the image loses little: the gap, the colour and the drift carry it alone. That is a measure of how much of its meaning sits in the one relation, and also of how little the wall was needed. The form that made the image fast and anonymous is also the form of a logo, and it travelled as one.
By the late 2000s the girl and her heart had become, for a public that knows no other piece of street art, the emblem of it, imitated in sentimental stencils and reproduced on mugs, phone cases and tote bags, where it says almost exactly what it said on the wall. Around it a discourse grew: the anonymity of the maker, the removal of street art from walls for sale, the editions and their authentication by Pest Control. Through all of it the image itself stayed as it was.
Movement V
On 5 October 2018 a framed canvas of the image, made in 2006 in spray paint and acrylic, sold at Sotheby’s in London for £1,042,000 with premium. As the sale closed, a shredder hidden in the frame drew the canvas half through, leaving its lower half hanging in strips below the frame. The balloon stayed whole inside it.
The artist’s studio renamed the object Love Is in the Bin and certified it as a new work, and in October 2021 it sold again at Sotheby’s for many times its first price. That object is a separate work with its own claim. What it discloses about a market that prices destruction as an event and buys it, its turn and its height, are its own, and they are not counted to the image here.
For the image the shredding is an afterlife, and it keeps the image’s law: the strips fall and the heart stays, the one coloured thing kept apart from what is lost. It is also the measure of how far the image’s fame had turned into price. Twenty-four years after a girl was sprayed on a stair, the image is whole in its versions and seen everywhere, and it holds what it held on the first day: one figure, one heart, and the gap between them.
Act III · The Twelve
The image has so few parts that nearly all of them are required. Remove the balloon and there is a child with a raised arm. Close the gap between her hand and the string and there is a child holding a balloon, a picture of possession, not of loss. Take away the red and the heart is a grey shape with no pull on the eye. The tilt of the body and the lifted hand make the gap ambiguous, release or reach, and the ambiguity is the work. What yields is the figure itself: her dress, hair and stance are conventions any girl in silhouette would supply, and the words of the first wall are dropped in the prints without loss. The test bites at the edges; the core it leaves is a single relation, a narrow compulsion. The cap clears.
Score: 7.7 / 10
What the image brings into the open can be stated, but it is the oldest statement and it is stated softly: love, or innocence, or hope, is held for a moment and goes. The ambiguity of the gesture, letting go or failing to catch, is real and is the most honest thing in it, since one gesture serves both; on the first wall the words tipped it toward consolation. That is nearer a mood than a meaning, and a mood ranks lower. The placing once did more: a child’s loss on a public stair, unsigned and illegal, offered to whoever climbed past. What Love Is in the Bin later disclosed, that the market prices destruction as an event and buys it, belongs to that work and is not counted here.
Score: 6.7 / 10
The image produces one effect and produces it reliably: a pang, the small drop of the heart at a red shape going up and away from a small hand. It is real, and it is why the image is loved. It is not elevation. There is no terror, no grandeur and no transport, and the scale is a child’s on a wall at eye level. Nor does the effect recur in a second register or deepen with return: it is the same pang at the hundredth meeting as at the first, and on mugs and phone cases it thins toward sweetness. The one moment the image touched something larger was its shredding at Sotheby’s in 2018, a picture eaten under the eyes of the room, and that height belongs to the event and the later work.
Score: 6.3 / 10
Deep patterns are summoned and none is built. The child and the lost thing; the heart, here literal, leaving the body that held it; the balloon as the soul going up, an image older than the toy; the fall from innocence as a letting go. All are evoked, and quickly: the red heart is a sign before it is a balloon, so the image announces its meaning instead of letting a particular grow into it. The girl is not particular enough to become archetypal. She is already generic, a silhouette with no face, a place that any viewer or any cause can fill, which is a strength for use and a weakness on this axis. Myth evoked, at the level of the emblem.
Score: 6.6 / 10
The inheritance is the stencil graffiti of Paris in the 1980s, above all Blek le Rat, whose debt Banksy has acknowledged, and the British graffiti and poster culture of the 1990s. The stencil as a fast, witty, legible public statement between graffiti and the gallery is the departure of Banksy’s body of work, not of this image. Within that body the image turns in tone: tenderness and sentiment where the register had been the rat, the joke and the political sting. The turn is real and modest, and the stake was the ordinary stake of illegal painting on a public wall, shared by every writer on the street. The larger swerve, putting a work’s destruction into its sale, is the act of 2018 and is weighed with Love Is in the Bin.
Score: 6.5 / 10
The form does real work. The stencil makes a silhouette, so the girl has no face and anyone may stand in her place; two values, black and red, put the whole weight of meaning on the one coloured thing; the drift of the balloon upward and away turns a flat wall into a small space of distance and of time. On the wall the form knew more: the public stair, the passer-by, the words. Paint the figure modelled in oil and the image loses its anonymity and its speed; change the colours and the heart no longer rules it. What holds the axis is that the form is also the form of a logo, chosen as much for its reproducibility as for what it knows: on a tote bag it says almost exactly what it said on the wall.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Evidence over promise, across twenty-four years, and return to the image yields little. It is grasped whole at first sight, and a second look finds the same gap, the same red and the same ambiguity, which does not open further. What has been returned to is the discourse around it: the anonymity of its maker, the ethics of removing street art from walls and selling it, the editions and their authentication by Pest Control, the shredding and the resale, and whether a destroyed work gains value by its destruction. That discourse is large, but it is mostly about Love Is in the Bin and about Banksy, not about this image. The well is the event’s; the image is shallow by design, and it is scored on what has been shown.
Score: 6.3 / 10
The field is British and European street art and urban painting of the 2000s, and its passage into galleries and the auction room; force and reach are scored together. Intrinsic force is low: the image reorganised nothing, and its means were already in use. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: by the late 2000s the girl and her heart had become the emblem of street art for a public that knows no other piece of it, imitated without end in sentimental stencils and reproduced in every kind of merchandise, and it was the image chosen for the act of 2018, at the centre of the most cited event in the recent art market. It redirected taste and the market more than practice; no serious line of artists starts from it. Wide reach, low force.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. Form: the image is whole, legible and unchanged across its versions, complete in its authorised prints and canvases. Presence: twenty-four years, and as wide a presence as any British image of its century; but fame and price are presence, not proof of permanence, and the widest presence earns little beyond the span. Fabric: the work began as a painting on a wall in a place, and the first wall is not known to stand; one celebrated canvas was half destroyed by design and became another work. For a stencil made to be repeated, losing the first wall takes less than it would from a painting, but the stair and its words were part of what the image first meant. A tenth or two is charged for them, and for a sentiment tied to its decade.
Score: 8.3 / 10
Command of the medium: the stencil sprayed on a wall and printed on paper. The cutting is clean and the image reads at a distance, which is the craft’s first demand. The silhouette is well posed, the girl’s weight forward, her hair and skirt lifted as if by the same wind that takes the balloon, so that figure and balloon share one movement. The string’s curve, slack and drawn up at once, is the best line in it, and the red is well placed against the black and the bare wall. What holds the figure is that the drawing is competent illustration, nothing a hand could not repeat from a stencil, the choices exact but few, and the making load-bearing only in the gap and the curve. A narrow command, cleanly used.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the black, faceless, grounded figure and the red, rising, emblematic heart. One law governs both, distance opened between the held and the holder: the string drawn from the hand, the colour withdrawn from the girl and given to the thing leaving her, the composition drifting upward and away. The words of the first wall turn the law toward consolation without breaking it, and even the image’s afterlife keeps to it, in a shredded canvas whose balloon alone stays whole inside the frame. What holds the axis is that narrowness is not coherence: the range between the farthest elements is one figure and one object, and the law, once seen, governs a very small territory.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The orders held are few: childhood, love and loss, and on the first wall the city’s public space and whoever passed through it. No family, labour, state, history, natural order or sacred order is present except as a viewer brings it, and the faceless figure, open to any cause, holds none of its own. What is present is integrated, since the few things the image holds are held in one gesture. What holds the axis lowest of the twelve, and below its own floor, is the size of the form: a single small figure and an object, which hold little because there is room in them for little. The figure describes the form, and the form is an emblem.
Score: 5.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.0 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.3, then The Inevitable at 7.7 and The Inner Law at 7.4. An image whole and unchanged across its prints and canvases after twenty-four years, though its first wall is not known to stand; a five-part image in which nearly every part is required, its core a single relation between hand and string; and one law of distance opened between the held and the holder, which governs a very small territory.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 5.8, below its own floor: childhood, love and loss, and the passer-by on a public stair, held in one gesture by a single small figure and an object. Next above it, The Sublime and The Bottomless Well at 6.3: one reliable pang without elevation, and an image grasped whole at first sight, whose return yields the discourse around it more than anything in it. Then The Swerve at 6.5 and The Archetypal Deep at 6.6: a modest turn of tone inside a body of work, and deep patterns summoned at the level of the emblem. These hold the work far below Tier IV: on the axes that read the image itself it is a single gesture of sentiment, and its reach, wide as it is, is reach without force. It stands lowest among the visual art pages, half a point below For the Love of God at 7.5.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.7 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.2, The Made at 7.3, The Inner Law at 7.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 8.3, Pressure on Tradition at 7.3, The Unconcealment at 6.7, The Archetypal Deep at 6.6 and The Swerve at 6.5 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet on nine axes: The Unconcealment, 6.7, The Sublime, 6.3, The Archetypal Deep, 6.6, The Swerve, 6.5, The Living Form, 7.2, The Bottomless Well, 6.3, Pressure on Tradition, 7.3, The Made, 7.3, and The Inner Law, 7.4, all below 7.5. The Megethos Floor is unmet: The Encompassed at 5.8 falls short of 6.0. Two of the five summit conditions are met, the Necessity Cap and the Coherence Floor. The twelve sum to 83.4, an average of 6.95 that displays 7.0: the work stands where its aggregate places it, at the foot of the band of Tier III and on its line with Tier II, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the image and its documented history, not from standing before any particular version; no image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the image in its versions as one work: the stencil sprayed in 2002 on the wall of the steps up to Waterloo Bridge on the South Bank, London, with the words “There is always hope” lettered beside it; a related wall version in Shoreditch; and the screenprint editions and the canvases. What stands now is the image in its prints and canvases, whole and unchanged. The first wall is not known to stand where it was painted, and the date and manner of its loss are not confirmed; nothing has been remade to stand in its place. Love Is in the Bin, the canvas of 2006 shredded in its frame at Sotheby’s, London, on 5 October 2018 and renamed and certified by the artist’s studio as a new work, is a separate work: it is weighed here only where it bears on the image’s reach and survival, and its own disclosure, turn and height are not scored. The maker is the pseudonymous English artist Banksy, whose identity is not confirmed. The only words quoted are those of the first wall, whose wording is certain. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the dimensions of the stencil, the fate of the first wall, the date and later history of the Shoreditch version, the publisher and size of the editions, the exact price of the resale of 2021, a later reworking of the figure reported for a campaign, and the results of public polls.