Bristol street artist Banksy has issued an appeal to 'all shoplifters' to steal from a particular store in central London who he said had 'helped themselves' to his artwork without asking.
In a cheeky post on his official Instagram account, Banksy shared a photo of the shop window display at upmarket fashion store Guess in Regent Street, with an uncompromising message.
The window display showed four mannequins with clothes on in front of a large image of one of Banksy's most famous works called Love Is In The Air, better known as the Flower Thrower. The work, which shows a masked protester throwing a bunch of flowers instead of a petrol bomb or rock, was first painted by Banksy on the West Bank in Palestine, and has been repeated many times since.
Read more: Banksy 'captured on CCTV in Ukraine' painting work of art near Kyiv
The Bristol street artist, who has spent much of November so far in Ukraine painting street art on bombed-out buildings, said Guess had not asked to use the image in the shop window. In the message on Instagram, he said: "Attention all shoplifters. Please go to GUESS on Regent Street. They've helped themselves to my artwork without asking, how can it be wrong for you to do the same to their clothes?"
The image was posted on Instagram to Banksy's 11.5 million followers, but not shared with Guess's 8.5 million followers on Insta.
It's not the first time Banksy has called out the corporate world for using his artwork. In 2019 he did something he once said he'd never do - and opened an online store to sell copies and prints of his work, in part because of the sizeable trade in faked or illicitly obtained Banksy artwork, and also because a greeting card company was attempting to utilise his trademark.
While the Love Is In The Air image has appeared on mugs, t-shirts, postcards and prints a million times, the Bristol street artist has taken exception to a major corporate fashion store using the image in its prestigious West End shop window. One original version of Flower Thrower, painted in a diamond canvas and with a ring of stars around the man, is coincidentally up for auction this month. The New York auctioneers selling the original work say it is the first time it's ever been up for sale, and could fetch more than a million dollars.
The Insta post was liked by almost 200,000 thousand people in half an hour after it was posted on Friday afternoon.
Read next:
- Banksy confirmed to be in Ukraine after street artwork speculation
- World reacts as Banksy artwork appears in war-torn Ukraine
- The most ridiculous theories about who Banksy is
- Banksy responds to speculation as Stockwood residents spot new framed artwork
- Banksy claims Reading Prison art with Bob Ross video
Follow the latest updates on this story and others like it here.
