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Bryan Pong
Professor Granillo
English 103
May 26 2019

How Street Art Awakens an Angel in Distress

Have you ever fallen so far in life that you think you can’t get up? By observing the

street art work of Banksy one can find that even angels can fall from grace. In the artwork

“Drunken Angel,” by Banksy, one can find elements of semiotics, aesthetic appeal, and color

psychology within it for the audience to interpret. The color psychology comes from the

contrasting black and white colors spray painted in an alleyway, while semiotics are shown in

the objects, the angel, and his actions. When analyzed this can show that even the best of people

can fall down and struggle. By using only a few contrasting colors, and powerful symbols,

Banksy can show how life is sometimes a struggle.

The stencil painting has an overall tired, frustrated feel to it. The wings and halo can

mean good intentions, while the posture of the angel shows their best effort was not enough. This

art piece was done in London, a city that is recognized as one of the most popular and richest in

the world. Despite London’s wealth and allure, some of its inhabitant’s struggle with

homelessness and substance abuse.

By using the lens of semiotics there are several symbols or signs that come in to the mind

when viewing this art work. The Signifier “is the object that exists”(Rader) in the artwork and

the “signified is the meaning”(Rader) . The main symbol, an angel, is a representation that
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signifies something magical and wonderful. The angel - the signifier- seems to have fallen in to

tragedy. In religion, an angel is one that has good morals and ethics. By depicting this angel in a

fallen tragic situation, it is saying that society can be affected by different aspects in life. The

more people can relate to art piece the more impact it can have. This represents several angles of

society. Meaning people can view the angel as a lost soul or one that might be homeless.

A large population of homeless are prevalent in London. Just because they are homeless

it doesn’t mean they aren’t good people. Nearly 7,500 people sleep rough on the streets of

London every year. These people come from every walk of life, and many of them want to find

work. As the Angel depicts, hard efforts does not necessarily improve reality. By placing an

Angel that has fallen from grace into an alleyway, it challenges the perception that homeless

people are not any different from the rest of us. Homelessness begins when something bad

happens and you don’t have family or friends around to help. It could happen to anyone,

including an angel, as Banksy portrays. Further, it challenges us as a society to think of how or

why someone may fall from grace and run into such poor circumstances. Relationship

breakdown, redundancy, poor mental health, alcohol or substance addiction, domestic abuse -

these are just some of the reasons why people end up homeless. For the most part, people don’t

choose to be homeless, they find themselves sleeping when they are facing a major crisis that

means they’ve ended up with nowhere else to stay.(Marsh)

Being deprived of options can leave anyone in a situation they did not choose for

themselves. Perhaps, Banksy is looking to make those who are usually ignored or neglected

more approachable by putting wings and a halo on them. With support, people can leave
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homelessness behind. While there are many great nonprofits and city programs that are meant to

help support homeless people uplift themselves into better situations, many of them are

underfunded. Due to budget cuts and other contributing factors, projects or programs often

struggle to find the funding they need to do vital work for their communities.

Some more signifiers are the alcohol bottle and the lit cigarette. This shows the angel has

succumbed to drugs and has fallen from its graceful ideologies. Presenting a depiction of society

on how some people can be in a great place but then end up in worst of places due to

the influences of society. A third symbol is the structure that surrounds the stenciled painting. It

shows that the angel is either trying to hide behind walls or is stuck in a alley ways of a heavens

golden arches. Either way it signifies a dark place in which the angel has journeyed to sit in

isolation.

Banksy mainly uses white with a black background to situate a scene where he

creates a contrast of purity and negativity. “Colour is kind of energy which is effect to the mind

and emotional feeling.”(Kalia) The white angel is suppose to depict something of purity, while

the black background shows darkness. “Color has strong psychological influence on human

reactions” so these neutral black and white colors bring up contrasting ideas. Leaving us with a

representation of the negative concept surrounding something pure. The structure around the

initial piece is also a golden yellow which could mean they are the arches of heaven and he’s on

the outside or in the alleyways.

Along with semiotics comes great aesthetics. Banksy carefully places a distraught

angel on the historic London Bridge, a place where many people visit to bask in a communal
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environment. The Angels wings capture a person’s attention with their aesthetic appeal. While

aesthetic appeal is subjective, and in the eye of the beholder. The objects depicted can force the

audience to question their own feelings about an Angel that has fallen to substance abuse. For

one, the first thing a person might notice are the Angels beautiful wings. Most often, Angels are

thought of to be divine beings that evoke feelings of purity and innocence. Their wings allow

them to ascend towards the heavens into places that mortal man cannot. The Angel’s halo and

wings are quickly oppressed once the viewer is triggered by the Angel’s body language and use

of alcohol and cigarettes. Just as much wings and a halo evoke aesthetic appeal of beauty, so do

the bottle of alcohol and cigarette.

We see both beauty and sadness intertwined, carefully placed in one of the richest cities

in the world. The value of aesthetic appeal relies on the person who sees it. To some, it’s an

ironic image of a defeated Angel, down on their luck. To others, it may bring attention to the

homelessness that riddles the city of London. To another person, it brings about the pain that is

associated to substance abuse. Regardless of the value, each person may interpret the tired and

defeated Angel very differently. Perhaps the Angel is just like any one of us, needing a drink and

a drag from a cigarette to decompress from life’s struggles. The beauty of the art is that it

represents a struggle in life, bringing mortal man and divine creatures closer together. As one

looks at the artwork, it makes you think about how this one angel ended up in this particular

situation.

The famous philosopher Immanuel Kant “located the distinctive features of the aesthetic

in the faculty of ‘judgment,’ arguing that we take up a certain stance toward objects and separate
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them from our scientific interests and our practical concerns. The key to the aesthetic realm lies

therefore in a certain ‘disinterested’ attitude, which we can assume toward any object and which

can be expressed in many contrasting ways.”(Britannica) This aligns with how Banksy uses

Angel wings and a halo to clash with a bottle of alcohol and a cigarette. The objects themselves

evoke emotions to each person independently from another. Where one person may view this

piece of art as witty, humorous, and clever. Another person may view the symbolism as

troublesome, traumatic, and relate the depiction of a person abusing substances or down on their

luck as relatable and potentially too close to home. These emotions that are evoked by the piece

of art draw out “sentiments from the audience that derives from the sole source of values that

govern human activity.”(Gracyk) Whether the artistic expression is viewed as beautiful or

troubling, any person can see both.

When it comes to aesthetic appeal, “almost anything might be seen as beautiful by

someone or from some point of view. Different people apply the word to quite disparate objects

for reasons that often seem to have little or nothing in common. It may be that there is some kind

of single underlying belief that motivates all of their judgments. It could also be, however, that

the term beautiful has no sense except as the expression of an attitude, which is in turn attached

by different people to quite different states of affairs.”(Britannica) For example, the halo and

wings alone may not be considered beautiful until they are paired with the bottle of alcohol and

the cigarette. Such a raw and beautiful expression of an angel’s demise might bring comfort to

some. Giving us a truth that not all beautiful things can sustain their pleasing appearance forever.

The comfort that, much like mortal man, Angels can succumb to defeat, sadness, and a toxic
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vulnerability that we thought were only reserved for the homeless population that live under a

dark dingy bridge.

To truly appreciate Banksy’s piece of art, one must not necessarily need to have a taste

for such art, or understand aesthetic concepts. Banksy’s art is unfiltered and raw. As a graffiti

street artist, he throws out the traditional concepts in which art is perceived or enjoyed. Instead,

he carefully places his images in areas that we may not expect. Encouraging us to think hard

about what we are saying, trying to make sense of the paradoxical and juxtaposing images or

objects that he carefully places together. To truly appreciate Banksy’s aesthetic, we must also

appreciate the realities of substance abuse and homelessness. There must be an awareness of the

rising homeless populations in our richest cities, the lack of support for those living in the streets

because of unaffordable housing or mental health issues. Aesthetics appeal only goes as far as to

capture the audience’s attention. Only after the audience has carefully studied the spray painted

stencil of an Angel slumped under a bridge smoking a cigarette, can they truly craft together the

clever contract is symbolic objects and how they’re tied to the medium that are the walls of

London. The theorist Hegel, claimed that “it is natural for us to seek a standard of taste; a rule

by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision afforded,

confirming one sentiment, and condemning another.” (Britannica) Furthermore, if we seek a

standard of taste, we are only confirming our sentiments while condemning another. This is

something that Banksy challenges us with head-on with his art. Our sentiments are quickly

challenged and we must tap into those that we condemn to formulate a new sense of awareness

for the world around us.

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In conclusion, the use of semiotics and aesthetics can help us to analyze the art piece

“Drunken Angel” by Banksy. The audience can compare things such as a fallen angel to a idea

of a homelessness, substance abuse, vulnerability, and a wealthy society that has abandoned

people in need. Several theorists explain how a piece of artwork can be beautiful while invoking

sadness using contrast, symbolism, and aesthetic appeal.

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Works Cited

Silverman, Jonathan, and Dean Rader. The World Is a Text: Writing about Visual and Popular
Culture. Broadview Press, 2018.

Gracyk, Theodore. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-

aesthetics/.

Britannica Academics

https://ezproxy.canyons.edu:2519/levels/collegiate/article/aesthetics/106009

Marsh, Sarah. “Record Number of People Sleeping Rough in London.” The Guardian, Guardian
News and Media, 31 Oct. 2018, www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/31/record-number-of-
people-are-sleeping-rough-in-london.