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    British Courts Service Destroys Banksy Mural Depicting Attack by Judge

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    The work, painted onto the walls of one of Britain’s most important court buildings, showed a judge attacking a demonstrator with a gavel.The anonymous street artist Banksy caused a stir on Monday with a striking new work depicting a judge attacking a protester with a gavel, painted on one of Britain’s most prestigious court buildings.The image, in black and white, apart from a splatter of red on the demonstrator’s sign, appeared on an outer wall of the Royal Courts of Justice, an imposing London complex that houses the High Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales and is considered one of the most secure locations in Britain.Now, just two days later, Banksy’s latest work is gone.The complex had quickly moved to block the artwork from public view, moving large metal screens in front of it on Monday. Then, on Wednesday morning, visitors to the mural filmed a man, wearing a mask, scrubbing the image off the walls, with two police officers standing guard nearby.A spokesman for Britain’s Ministry of Justice said in an email that the work had been destroyed. The Royal Courts of Justice are a protected building under British heritage laws, the spokesman said, so the court’s service is “obliged to maintain its original character.”Historic England, which governs such building protections, says on its website that the 19th-century court buildings are “one of the foremost examples of High Victorian Gothic Revival design” in the country.A spokeswoman for Banksy did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The artist posted an image of the artwork on Instagram on Monday, which is typically how he announces new work. His fans had widely interpreted the piece as a comment on the treatment of supporters of Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian activist group that Britain’s government banned as a terrorist organization in July. Since the prohibition came into force, the police have arrested hundreds of people at demonstrations for displaying messages of support for the group.The mural by anonymous artist Banksy depicted a judge attacking a protester with a gavel.Toby Melville/ReutersAlthough some Banksy artworks have been delicately removed from walls and structures, large auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s don’t sell them, and the artist refuses to provide certificates of authenticity.Still, the decision to scrub the image off the wall perplexed some dealers in street art. John Brandler, a gallery owner who has traded several Banksy murals, said in an interview that he couldn’t understand why the court service had not hired him, or another dealer, to carefully remove the painting from the building’s walls so it could be sold to raise money for charity.“Yes, it was criminal damage,” Brandler said. “But why not use that criminal damage to benefit the community?”Brandler said that he believed the work could have raised up to 5 million British pounds, or about $6.8 million.Jo Maugham, a founder of the Good Law Project, the legal organization that filmed the mural’s removal and that has opposed the ban on Palestine Action, said in a statement that the British government should not be destroying a work by “an important artist” who had criticized government policy. More

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      Banksy’s Already Covered Painting in London Comments on the U.K.’s Palestine Action Crackdown

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      Banksy’s painting at Royal Courts of Justice, London, © Banksy 2025

      Banksy’s Already Covered Painting in London Comments on the U.K.’s Palestine Action Crackdown

      September 8, 2025

      ArtSocial Issues

      Kate Mothes

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      On a wall outside the Royal Courts of Justice in Westminster, London, a new piece by Banksy appeared this morning before being covered up within hours. The short-lived artwork, which the artist shared on Instagram and the front page of his website, depicts a judge in traditional robes and a large wig beating a protester with a gavel as blood spatters across the demonstrator’s placard.

      The piece by the anonymous artist is likely a response to the arrests of nearly 900 protestors during a rally against the ban on Palestine Action, a group that Britain has declared a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is considered a crime, which can be punished by up to 14 years in prison. Even though organizers insist the demonstration of around 1,500 was peaceful, The Met nevertheless arrested more than half of the attendees.

      Banksy is known for his statements about current affairs and socio-political issues around the world. He’s famous for stealthily targeting charged sites, like destroyed buildings in Ukraine or a small town in Wales that the World Health Organization for a short time deemed the most-polluted community in the U.K. His striking and subversive imagery is sometimes humorous, ironic, or tongue-in-cheek, always taking a direct and purely visual approach in his critique of contemporary issues.

      “What makes this work remarkable is not just its imagery, but its placement,” says Jasper Tordoff, a Banksy expert at MyArtBroker, on Artnet. “By choosing the Royal Courts of Justice, Banksy transforms a historic symbol of authority into a platform for debate. In classic Banksy form, he uses the building itself to sharpen the message, turning its weight and history into part of the artwork.”

      Follow the artist’s updates on Instagram.

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      Banksy’s New Piece in Marseille Becomes a Tribute to Memory and Loss

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      On a quiet wall in Marseille, Banksy has once again transformed urban space into a mirror of human emotion. This time, the message hits closer to the heart. On Rue Félix Frégier, a freshly stenciled black lighthouse now rises from a beige wall, accompanied by the words:“I want to be what you saw in me.”It’s unclear whether the piece is a universal reflection or a deeply personal statement, but for those of us who’ve followed Banksy’s work for decades, this one carries the unmistakable weight of loss. Word has spread that this piece is linked to the memory of an old friend of the artist, someone who passed away recently. If true, it adds another layer of meaning to an already haunting intervention.At first glance, the lighthouse stands alone, quiet and symbolic. But step back and the composition reveals its brilliance. It’s a trick of shadow. The bollard in front of the wall casts a real shadow and Banksy has extended it into illusion. The lighthouse is not a structure, but a shadow, rising from something mundane. It’s not there, and yet it is. Just like the memory of someone who once saw the best in you.This makes the accompanying text all the more poignant.Not “I am what you saw in me,” but“I want to be.”It’s a promise. A regret. A longing.📍 Why Marseille?Marseille has always been a city of in-betweens. A place where ships dock, where people arrive and leave. A city steeped in movement and memory. There’s no more fitting location for a tribute like this where a bollard, a wall, and a shadow become a lighthouse not just in form, but in spirit.✅ Verified LocationThe work was revealed Thursday on Banksy’s official Instagram. Though its exact location was initially a mystery, it sits quietly on Rue Félix Frégier in Marseille. No barriers. No plaques. Just raw emotion, open to the street.As someone who’s seen thousands of interventions on walls around the world, I can say with certainty. This isn’t a mural for attention. It’s a piece of mourning. A whispered tribute. A lighthouse for someone who once saw the light in him and maybe in all of us. More

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      When Banksy Came to Red Hook and Made His Mark

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      A chunk of wall that bears the work of the graffiti artist will go on display in Manhattan this month.Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll find out about what happened to a 7,500-pound chunk of a wall with a Banksy installation from 2013. We’ll also get details on a request from Mayor Eric Adams’s lawyer for a federal judge to hurry a decision on whether to drop corruption charges against the mayor.Guernsey’sA dark-colored van parked down the block from Vassilios Georgiadis’s nondescript warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn, one evening in 2013. Georgiadis, a roofing and asbestos abatement contractor, noticed it because he was standing outside, smoking.He told the man who got out of the van that it was not a good idea to leave it in that spot. Tractor-trailers turning the corner too fast could clip the car, Georgiadis said.The man said he would not be there long. He said something about how he just wanted to run to a convenience store nearby for cigarettes and coffee. Georgiadis told him to pull into an empty space in the driveway outside the warehouse. The man did and headed off. The van was still there when Georgiadis left a little while later.Georgiadis worked at home the next day, and then took some paperwork to his son Anastasios, who spent the day on a roofing job on Staten Island, ignoring calls from his mother.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Whimsical Parade of Banksy Animals Sends Fans on a Giddy Hunt

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      Each day for nine straight days, a new Banksy artwork appeared somewhere in London. For some, it became a citywide treasure hunt.The first Banksy piece to show up was a mountain goat, spotted by passers-by on a wall near the River Thames. The second work, a pair of elephants, appeared overnight on a house in southwest London. Then came some playful monkeys, a howling wolf, two hungry pelicans and a cat.For nine straight days, Banksy, the famed and elusive street artist, unveiled a menagerie of animal artworks around the city, a prolific outburst that thrilled Londoners.For Banksy fans, finding the works became a daily, citywide scavenger hunt.“It’s like an adventure,” said Daniel Lloyd-Morgan, an artist who sketches live street scenes. “It’s turned into a safari around London.”Every day since the first one appeared, Mr. Lloyd-Morgan checked social media to figure out the location of each new Banksy and pay it a visit. “This is like a happening,” he said. “So basically I put everything else on hold.”It was an unusually whimsical outpouring from Banksy, a British artist known for his socially and politically charged street art, which has appeared in New York City, the West Bank, Ukraine and other areas around the world. More recently, he sent an inflatable boat with dummy passengers to surf across a crowd at the Glastonbury Festival in England, a commentary on the plight of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea.But what message was Banksy trying to send with the animals scattered across London? That has spurred speculation, even as the works have delighted the residents of the neighborhoods they popped up in.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What’s a Banksy Museum Without Banksy?

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      Work by the anonymous street artist is hard to find. At a museum devoted to him, it’s even harder.To enter the Banksy Museum, which opened this month above a Bank of America on the lower lip of SoHo, a visitor must wade through the thicket of vendors crowding Canal Street with bootleg Apple products and almost-convincing Prada handbags splayed out on blankets.It’s a fitting approach. The Banksy Museum does not own or display any actual Banksys but rather 167 decent-enough reproductions of them, life-size murals and paintings on panels treated to look like exterior walls that stretch through an exhibition space, designed to resemble the street.The Canal Street entrance to the Banksy Museum, amid gift stores and street vendors.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThat these replicas of Banksy’s oeuvre since the late 1990s are more or less faithful to their source material. That has less to do with the competence of the anonymous artists who executed them than it does with the simplicity of Banksy’s aesthetic: photo-derived stencil work, more about social commentary than technical proficiency. A Banksy work does not astound with technique or formal innovation, nor is it meant to. Designed to be quickly made and quicker understood, they rely on easy visual gags that don’t always amount to much, all punchline and no windup (a man walking a Keith Haring dog; riot police and protesters having a pillow fight; a boy catching snow on his tongue that’s actually ash from a dumpster fire). His early political satire, like Winston Churchill with a mohawk and teddy bears lobbing Molotov cocktails, had all the profundity of a dorm room poster, a shallow populism that explains his trajectory — populism being a sure route toward cultural phenomenon.The world’s most famous street artist who prefers to work in the shadows, Banksy has traveled that route since the mid-2000s, inspiring a singular devotion. The appearance of a new work is heralded as a cultural event, its removal often met with protests. Few other artists are treated as prophet and savior, and fewer still who insist on a complete allergy to public life. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Banksy in London: A Dead Tree and Vivid Hues in Finsbury Park

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      In an unexpected corner of London’s Finsbury Park, a new Banksy piece silently confronts passersby with a jarring juxtaposition of life and decay. Unannounced but unmistakably Banksy, the artwork features a lifeless tree standing in stark contrast to a backdrop of vibrant green splatters—created, in a twist of irony, with a fire extinguisher. This vivid use of color and medium not only captivates visually but also provokes a deep contemplation of the themes it presents.The stark imagery of a dead tree in a park, where life is expected to flourish, is immediately compelling. Behind it, the wall serves as a canvas for an explosion of bright green paint, applied with such force and volume that it suggests a wild, almost violent attempt to resurrect the greenery that should have been. This artificial canopy of leaves, rendered through the unconventional method of a fire extinguisher, speaks to a profound message of loss, resilience, and perhaps a critique of human attempts to control or mimic nature’s beauty. The contrast between the lifeless tree and the vibrant paint creates a visual and thematic dichotomy that is ripe for interpretation.Context and Significance: Beyond the SurfacePlacing this work in the context of Banksy’s oeuvre, it aligns with his penchant for addressing societal issues with poignancy and humor. Yet, this piece stands out for its direct engagement with environmental themes, using the visual medium to highlight the contrast between what is natural and what is artificial. The choice of Finsbury Park as the location adds layers to its interpretation, possibly reflecting on the park as a space of coexistence for nature and urbanity, and the ongoing struggles to balance the two.The Impact of Banksy’s Environmental CommentaryThis latest installation invites viewers to reflect on their relationship with nature and the environment. By juxtaposing the dead tree with the artificial vibrancy of the green paint, Banksy may be urging a reevaluation of how urban societies interact with the natural world. The use of a fire extinguisher to apply the paint also suggests a sense of urgency, a call to action that cannot be ignored.Conclusion: A Mirror to Our TimesBanksy’s unannounced work in Finsbury Park serves not only as a visual spectacle but as a profound commentary on the environmental challenges facing contemporary society. As with all his pieces, the true meaning may remain enigmatic, allowing interpretations to flourish and encouraging public discourse. This artwork, silent yet screaming, presents a poignant reflection on the state of our natural world and the artificial means by which we seek to preserve it.In the wake of this powerful statement, the conversation around environmental conservation and our role within it is invigorated. Banksy’s piece stands as a testament to the power of art to inspire, challenge, and provoke thought, leaving an indelible mark on the canvas of public consc (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); More