Queen Victoria
By Banksy, 2003
Blazing red fills the entire background, throwing a stark spotlight on a scene that would have horrified the woman at its center. Banksy, the anonymous British street artist, uses his signature stencil technique here to portray Queen Victoria in a decidedly unroyal pose. She keeps her crown and scepter, the trappings of majesty intact, but everything else about the image pokes fun at the very idea of Victorian dignity. The monarch famous for strict morals and buttoned-up propriety is reimagined in a way that flips her legacy completely upside down.
The joke rides on a piece of everyday slang. Since "Victorian" has come to mean prudish and repressed, showing the queen like this becomes a wink at all the private desires tucked away behind a respectable public face. Banksy made the piece in 2003, when he was making a name for himself with biting social commentary wrapped in humor. Sticking to just black, white, and red keeps the image punchy and instantly readable, which is exactly why his stencil work lands the way it does. Some will find it clever, others will find it crude, but either way it does what sharp satire should, which is make you rethink a symbol you thought you understood.