£50,000-£80,000 VALUE (EST.)
$90,000-$150,000 VALUE (EST.)
$80,000-$130,000 VALUE (EST.)
¥420,000-¥670,000 VALUE (EST.)
€60,000-€90,000 VALUE (EST.)
$480,000-$770,000 VALUE (EST.)
¥7,980,000-¥12,770,000 VALUE (EST.)
$60,000-$100,000 VALUE (EST.)
This estimate blends recent public auction records with our own private sale data and network demand.
Screenprint, 2003
Signed Print Edition of 150
H 70cm x W 50cm
TradingFloor
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Joe Syer, Head of Urban & Contemporary Art
Auction Date | Auction House | Artwork | Hammer Price | Return to Seller | Buyer Paid |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
August 2022 | Sotheby's Online - United Kingdom | Laugh Now - Signed Print | |||
September 2021 | Christie's London - United Kingdom | Laugh Now - Signed Print | |||
September 2021 | Sotheby's Online - United Kingdom | Laugh Now - Signed Print | |||
June 2021 | Bonhams New Bond Street - United Kingdom | Laugh Now - Signed Print | |||
June 2021 | Phillips London - United Kingdom | Laugh Now - Signed Print | |||
April 2021 | Christie's London - United Kingdom | Laugh Now - Signed Print | |||
March 2021 | Sotheby's Online - United Kingdom | Laugh Now - Signed Print |
Laugh Now is a Banksy screen print from 2003, released in a signed edition of 150. Featuring a monkey wearing a sandwich board that reads "Laugh Now But One Day We'll Be In Charge". The original artwork first appeared in a Brighton nightclub.
‘Laugh now, but one day we’ll be in charge’, reads the sandwich board worn by the eerie monkey in this 2003 Banksy signed print. Much like with Banksy’s visual vocabulary in general, there can be various interpretations for the monkey figure in this work. It can be viewed as a representation of the oppressed, who walk the streets until they’re exhausted in order to spread their message. Or perhaps it is simply a monkey, by which Banksy is commenting on how man has enslaved animals for centuries, including his primate cousins, much like he does in the work Barcode with a leopard, or it could be a symbol for the common man, the average Joe who is downtrodden by class wars and enslaved by capitalism, themes that Banksy regularly revisits through different characters such as a rat in other famous prints like Love Rat and Gangsta Rat.
Laugh Now was a commission before being released as a print, it appeared in a nightclub in Brighton and eventually went on to be sold for almost half a million dollars.
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