Banksy wants it to be spring. There is no other way to understand the painting, which appeared in London on Sunday and for which the street artist confirmed his authorship on Instagram on Monday. It doesn’t show a specific motif, rather the wall of the house in the Finsbury Park district is simple: green. But there is a bare tree right in front of it, so from the right angle it looks as if it has leaves on it. At the bottom left a figure is holding some kind of sprayer and looking up.
The green used was similar to the color used by the district administration on social buildings, said James Peak, who made a documentary about the graffiti artist for the BBC and for whom it was already clear on Sunday that the picture was by Banksy. “It’s spring now and this tree should be full of leaves, but Banksy must have cycled past and thought how miserable it looked,” he adds.
In any case, London has one more attraction with the mural; since Monday morning, many people have been heading to Hornsey Road in the north of the British capital. In the past, Banksy has repeatedly sprayed paintings on house walls and other surfaces at night. His mostly socially critical works are traded for large sums of money; one of his pictures was even shredded at an auction in 2018, only to be auctioned again three years later – in a destroyed state – for a sum of millions. Above all, Banksy’s popularity is based on one fact: Even after 20 years of artistic work, his identity is unknown. Most recently, a re-unearthed BBC interview from 2003 appeared to provide crucial clues, in which Banksy says his name is Robbie. Whether this means the Bristol artist Robin Gunningham, whose pseudonym is Robin Banks, or Robert Del Naja from Massive attackthis rumor also persists, is still unclear.