Here it is, back in 2010. That greenish building that used to be a bank housed Villains Vault at the time:
Click to expand
Detail, camera left:
Und camera right:
A thin red line connects these two elements, one assumes.
Here’s the update:
Banksy’s ‘Haight Street Rat’ graffiti holes up in an S.F. gallery by Rachel Howard
Now let’s say that Banksy caught Villains Vault displaying and selling unlicensed Banksy reprints as well as stuff from other street artists, you know, flagrantly, back in 2010. So then Banksy was all enough is enough, so he was all THIS IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE.
And then he drew the line.
So really, the line is the piece, instead of the rat, right?
So if you just have the rat, you’re missing part of the story, right?
So it’s not just The Rat In The Hat Comes Back, right? I’m not saying that Banksy is all that deep but he’s deeper than a simple put-a-beret-on-it.
Now I understand why that KRON guy just went for the rat, but to do this job “as close as you could get to the intention Banksy had,” you’d have gotten the rest of the piece.
Just saying.
Or, IOW:
“The original Haight Street Rat stencil is a beret-wearing rat clutching a marker and a red line that extends from the rat to the neighboring building on the corner of Haight Street and Belvedere Street. On the adjacent building, the rat has seemingly written the text “THIS IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE” in red which can be seen from the street above a clothing store that allegedly took street artists’ works and printed them on T-shirts and other apparel for sale without giving the artists any credit or revenue.”
Or IOW:
“Named the Haight Street Rat for its placement atop a Victorian building on Haight Street, the stenciled rat clutching a red marker is now neatly framed and displayed in a location entirely unlike the one in which it was created: the lobby of the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown L.A., the city’s tallest tower and perhaps its most conspicuous symbol of capitalism. It’s a baffling venue for a piece of site-specific street art that initially wrapped across two buildings…