Banksy

Some artists spend their lives working to get discovered, attempting to gain enough exposure in the art world to show at any gallery of their choice. The path leading into the loose, vague entity that is the modern art world is not easily found. The modern art scene consists of a random, fickle, undefined, sometimes self-declared, smattering of artists, critics, gallery owners and potential buyers who label and declare what is modern art.

Banksy — aka Robert Banks — a 32-year-old from Bristol, found his own gallery on the streets of Britain, far removed from the well lit walls of an air conditioned gallery, existing in display regardless of critics or potential buyers. He was allegedly expelled from school at the age of 14 and spent most of his early years doing freehand graffiti.  A Simon Hattenstone story in the UK paper The Guardian describes how Banksy was arrested several times, eventually spending a short period of time in jail for his offenses (a.k.a. art). At the time, graffiti was usually covered up rather quickly by the “Keep Britain Tidy” campaign — so most, if not all, of Banksy’s freehand art has been painted over. Apparently, some people do not even consider Banksy’s work art. In an interview with Hattenstone, Banksy himself claims to be more vandal than artist, but one look at his work and it becomes evident how he is different than most kids tagging walls underneath train bridges.

Using mostly spray paint and stencils, he has decorated buildings across the UK with ironic images of rats raising the flag at Iwo Jima, the Mona Lisa holding a rocket launcher, smiling riot police and rats in suits on their way to work with briefcases in hand. Some of his pieces are life-size, others are truly larger than life — spanning entire sides of buildings. Recently, Banksy has stepped up the risk factor of his work and exposed his art to a much larger audience.

One morning, nine different paintings appeared on the Palestinian side of the barrier that was erected between Israel and the Palestinian Territories. Nine large windows displaying idealic scenes of life on the Israeli side, opened up to the impoverished Palestinian world. According to his spokeswoman Jo Brooks, he was threatened by several Israeli soldiers waving guns in his face as he finished one of his pieces. The concepts that he painted on the wall represent escape through the wall — to a seemingly better life.

At one point in an article published in Zoo magazine, Banksy referred to the building of the wall as turning “Palestine into the largest open prison.”

On one occasion he showed up in L.A.’s Disney Land, where he dropped off a life-size figure of a Guantanamo Bay detainee behind the fence of a ride. On another, back in the UK, an enormous 20-foot bronze statue of lady justice wearing black leather boots, with a dollar bill stuffed in her panties was deposited on Clarkemell Green. This piece of art was three and a half tons cemented into the ground. He actually ended up agreeing to pay for its removal for an undisclosed amount. One of the most remarkable feats of what he does is that there are no witnesses to his acts of creation. Either in the dead of night or in the presence of large crowds of people, his art just appears without anyone snapping an identifying photo, or fingering the man behind the image that is Banksy.

Even across different mediums, his work is stylized enough to know that it is his, with or without the rounded block letters of Banksy’s signature. From silk screening works to warehouse gallery shows of live animals dressed in police uniforms (Turff War, London 2003), he has found a bridge between the drastically different worlds of upper echelon art dealers and the people who walk the streets of his public galleries. His work is recognized and appreciated on the streets for its simplicity and decidedly different approach to the age old act of graffiti.

However, recently, that appreciation and its iconic status have been recognized by art dealers and investors. His silk screens have been snatched up in two different auctions. According to the BBC, Angelina Jolie reportedly dropped ₤200,000 on three of Banksy’s pieces at an L.A. auction — one of these being “Picnic” below, a painting that depicts a white family having a picnic while a group of Africans look on. The bloated stomachs of the children is more than a subtle expression that the Africans are malnourished. This painting alone sold for $226,000 USD. Banksy has also broken auction records in the UK — at one point exceeding ten times the lowest estimated bid.

Occasionally, Banksy has moved out of the street and into galleries . . . well, galleries of a Banksy sort. They were warehouses rented out in secret, their addresses released two hours before opening to a handful of people who were invited. Banksy, of course, was not there. The first “Banksy gallery” show took place in London in 2003. It was called “Turf War,” and consisted of live animals dressed and painted in different costumes, surrounded by spray painted vans and images on the walls.

The second was called “Barely Legal” and was held in L.A. on September 15 last year. This showing was based around a more political theme with the center piece being a live Indian elephant painted with a pinkish floral pattern. The painting of an animal gained some exposure from animal rights activists. In an article in the BBC, Kari Johnson, the owner of the Tai — the 38-year-old elephant — explained that Tai had not suffered as a result of the painting. “Tai has done many, many movies. She’s used to make-up,” Johnson said.

The idea behind the exhibit was relatively simple — a pronounced concept of “the elephant in the room” — to highlight the tendency of the modern human to go about his life ignoring the plight of the war torn and impoverished regions, and choosing not to speak of the elephant in the room. This was further illustrated by some of his more common stencils on canvas.

To Banksy’s credit, he has, at times, already had his art hanging in museums. He just had to hang it himself. He slipped into several museums in New York and London to hang different pieces of his own creation. In the Museum of Natural History in New York, his painting of a beetle with missiles on its back hung for two days in the biodiversity exhibit before being discovered.

In the UK his cave painting of a stick figure Neanderthal pushing a shopping cart labeled “early man venturing towards out of town hunting grounds” hung for three days in the British Museum. This kind of work seems to be in sync with his early ideas about the art world. A lot of attention on the value of artwork — protecting it, confining it, making sure no one else takes it, or owns it. And yet in these two arenas, he simply slipped in and gave his art away — quietly “corrupting” these monolithic entities who consider themselves authorities on identifying valuable art. And, paradoxically, it must have been a pretty thrilling experience for a man like Banksy to exhibit his work, on — and within the confines of — these walls.

In most cases though, to try and buy Banksy’s work, it might make more sense to buy the building it was painted on. In some cases people have tried to actually steal his work from the walls they’re on. One group of thieves was successful in using an edge cutter to remove a large chunk of a wall with a picture of a rat bouncing a ball underneath a sign that said “No Ball Games.” Ironically . . . the thieves shortchanged themselves and didn’t take the sign. Another group of would-be robbers attempted to steal a large steel door that he had painted in Liverpool during the biennial celebrations, but apparently they were interrupted by the buildings cleaners before they made off with the goods.

He remains a mystery, appearing for only a few interviews since his guerilla art has hit the scene. He has several people working up front for him, intentionally avoiding interaction with the public. His agent Steve Lazarides is apparently next to impossible to contact and his PR company, JBPR, would find no advantage in exposing him. He is in some ways forced to live in the shadows to maintain the secrecy of his identity — due to the nature of his work — but that secrecy and anonymity has helped create his stir around his work. The eventual uncovering of the man who is Banksy seems inevitable considering the recent explosion in popularity. Of course, he has proven to be extremely resourceful up until now, so it’s feasible he will always exist hidden behind the image he’s created.

Most of his pieces tend to ridicule the modern world across the board without any real attempt to force another model of life on his audience. The images of a little girl hugging a bomb and children holding hands wearing gas masks are just two examples of drawing out the contradictions of our day to day lives in developed nations that, despite our seemingly evolved status, continue to wage wars and kill one another.

He also brings into play an anti-establishment/anti-commercialism concept that you can see in almost all of his work — from the smiling cops in riot-gear to the ingenious stunt in which he replaced hundreds of copies of Paris Hilton’s new album with renditions of his own creation. The Bansky CD jacket portrays some art showing Paris’s head over a topless mannequin and Paris’s body topped with the head of a Chihuahua. There are also several text expressions such as “Thou shalt not worship false idols” and “Every CD you buy puts me even further out of your league.” He also inserted a remixed cd and titled the tracks with questions like “Why am I Famous?,” “What Have I Done?” and “What Am I For?”

It’s a rage against modern culture, which began in a place where culture couldn’t resist him — on buildings and streets of the public domain. Now Banksy has been brought inside and celebrated in a sense, while his paintings sell with enormous ferocity. It seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy that the social elite and the system that he mocks puts so much value on his work, despite his message.

Banksy’s work is at times humorous, but pretty heavy conceptually. He doesn’t require the respect or acceptance of any external force to give his work validity. This is an intriguing approach for an artist, considering the climate of what makes up today’s art world, and the means by which art gains recognition. In this way, Banksy screams an obvious, but often ignored part of what modern culture really is — the spoon feeding of artistic and intellectual material that is accepted in our lives because it comes to us through familiar means. Whether it be news or music, visual art or ways of existence — the free thinker can find little peace working inside this culture.

In that light, Banksy has achieved a strong beginning to what promises to be an amazing career — not only for what he’s saying, but by the approach that he’s taken. These latest auctions, that have netted such a value for his work, seem like the next version of his museum hangings — a step up the ladder for Banksy. People squabble to get their hands on his material work, while its inherent value is based on the pop culture that priced it. It would seem to be a last laugh on Bansky’s part — but if trends tell us anything, we can only expect to hear a lot more of Banksy’s laughter . . . all the way to his invisible bank no doubt.•