The Drinker is a statue by graffiti artist Banksy, depicting Rodin's The Thinker with a traffic cone on its head.
History In 2004, the statue was placed in a small square at Princes Circus on Shaftesbury Avenue between New Oxford Street and High Holborn in central London.banksy-the-drinker CNN It is a subversive comment using The Thinker by Auguste Rodin.
In March 2004, The Drinker was stolen by "art terrorist" and football hooligan Andy Link (also known as AK47), a former porn star with an arrest record and a record of drug charges.
Around a year after Link took The Drinker, Link says he registered "the lost and found item" with police, and contacted Banksy, asking for £5,000, or an original canvas, "to cover costs".
In 2007, three years after Link stole it, the sculpture was taken from Link's garden, while he was away.
In December 2015, Link re-installed, as The Stinker, "an imitation of Banksy's sculpture" The Drinker, modified with a toilet seat, cistern and graffiti, in central London.banksy-the-drinker CNN self-proclaimed-british-art-terrorist 500952454 Getty Images self-proclaimed-british-art-terrorist 500952576 Getty Images sculpture-by-banksy-now-amended-by-the-artist-ak47 125835407 Alamy banksys-sculpture-the-drinker-returned-as-the-stinker 108560654 Alamy Banksy's Drinker turns Stinker Flickr
The Stinker (2015) was a commissioned work from sculptor Emmanuel Okoro.
The 2016 crowdfunded documentary (with "dream-reenactment sequence", "amusing artifice") film The Banksy Job is about Andy Link and the work.
See also List of works by Banksy
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