Napalm (Serpentine edition)
Napalm (Serpentine edition)
Signed Print
Banksy
£28,000-£40,000
$60,000-$80,000 Value Indicator
$50,000-$70,000 Value Indicator
¥260,000-¥380,000 Value Indicator
€30,000-€45,000 Value Indicator
$290,000-$420,000 Value Indicator
¥5,790,000-¥8,270,000 Value Indicator
$35,000-$50,000 Value Indicator
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30 x 42cm, Edition of 50, Screenprint
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Meaning & Analysis
Banksy's Napalm (Serpentine edition) (2006) is a screen print from a special edition of 50. It reworks Nick Ut's "The Terrors of War" photo, showing Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald holding a young girl whose village was napalmed. The piece satirizes corporations, transforming the original's war imagery into an unsettling ambiguity.
Napalm is undoubtedly one of Banksy’s most powerful, hard-hitting works, cementing his position as a pioneering political contemporary artist. Napalm is a mostly monochromatic screen print in three colours. The work references a photograph taken during the Vietnam War, showing a nine year-old-girl (Kim Phuc) running from the horror of a Napalm blast. The moment was captured by photographer Nick Ut. On this print, Banksy took the photograph as his context for creating a disarming juxtaposition – we have two supposedly friendly American icons of consumerism (Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse), smiling as they lead the terrorised girl away from a disaster. This artwork is a quintessential and especially strong formulation of Banksy’s critique of the military-industrialist complex, linking violent conflict and capitalism. This is also demonstrated in other works like Bomb Hugger and Happy Choppers.