Using one of his trademark wordplays, Banksy combines his own street name with that of one of the sacred icons of graffiti (and contemporary art in general): Jean-Michel Basquiat.
In this homage to his predecessor, the Bristol artist merges two key elements: on one hand, he employs the practice of appropriation, widely used by street artists, and on the other, he creates an allegory of consumerist capitalism, depicted as a Ferris wheel where even artistic masterpieces are transformed into commodities, endlessly reproduced on T-shirts or arbitrarily reinterpreted for new advertising campaigns.
Banksquiat thus depicts a Ferris wheel in which all the cabins have been replaced by Basquiat’s iconic crown motif—his trademark and one of his first tags. Executing the design in gray, with the crowns outlined in white chalk against a black background, Banksy also pays tribute to another major figure of 20th-century Street Art: Keith Haring. Haring began his career with a series of chalk drawings on empty advertising panels in the New York subway.
The work comments on the excesses of late capitalism while also prompting reflection on a paradox: for art to be truly accessible to all, works must be reproduced and shared, rather than hoarded in the collections of wealthy bourgeois who own the originals.