Existencilism - Documenting one man’s obsession with all things graffiti...

Sunday 21 October 2007

Profile: Banksy

“How to Win Friends and Influence People”

Before I begin, I have a slight confession to make. My reasoning behind playing the ‘Banksy’ card so early in the life of this blog is two-fold.

Firstly, I have always been a big fan of Banksy. This blog shares the same title as one of Banksy’s self-published collections of his work and I even have a (supposedly) limited edition silkscreen print of ‘His Master’s Voice’ adorning my bedroom wall. Incidentally, the said print has now outlived the young lady who bought it for me. Only in a metaphorical sense, unfortunately.

(HMV print, hanging from my wall, photographed and edited in Photoshop)

Secondly, as Existencilism has not had a huge amount of visitors since its inception, I figured, somewhat duplicitously, that I may be able to ride the Banksy wave and snag a few more visitors via aimless Google searches by publishing a hyper-extended quasi-essay on the man and his work.

If nothing else, I am honest.

“…stifling anonymous speech is a huge cost to democracy.”

One of the most inappropriate nicknames of all time, at least in my opinion, belonged to Ronald Reagan: The Great Communicator, who we’ve come to learn did a pretty shitty job of communicating the government’s problems and indiscretions. A nickname like that deserves a more righteous, honest owner—someone like BANKSY
(Shepard Fairey)

Without putting too fine a point on it, Banksy is Britain’s most celebrated graffiti artist. In fact, Shepard Fairey has even gone so far as to call him the ‘most important living artist in the world.’ Therefore, as you would expect, due to the British constabulary’s habitual dislike of graffiti (and immigrants, minorities, groups of young people, actually serving the public…), you are likely to find Lord Lucan before you cross paths with our most famous anonymous artist.

Banksy’s identity is a subject of febrile speculation. Various reports describe him, with his silver tooth and matching Elizabeth Duke silver chain, as looking more like a cross between Jimmy Nail and Mike Skinner of The Streets than he does Damien Hurst. It is even possible to buy t-shirts emblazoned with the three little words: I AM BANKSY. At this point, I have to hold my hands up here and go on record as saying that I actually think they are quite cool.

(Mr. Crocodile Shoes and Mr. Original Pirate Material)

Even his parents are apparently completely oblivious to the fact that their son is the equal parts lauded and lambasted Bristolian: ‘[they] think I’m a painter and decorator’. An abridged history could read as follows: around 1993, Banksy’s graffiti began appearing around Bristol and by 2001, his signature could be seen all over the United Kingdom and beyond, eliciting both civic hand-wringing and comparisons to Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.

Weapons of mass distraction

Whilst Peter Gibson, a spokesperson for the very British Keep Britain Tidy campaign, asserts that Banksy’s work is simple vandalism, it is possible to see Banksy’s political purpose through such ‘vandalism’ (although he prefers the term ‘brandalism’) as being reminiscent of the Ad Busters (read: subvertising) movement, who deface corporate advertising in order to distort the original capitalist message and therefore hijack the advert.

(used courtesy of Adbusters online)

Having first formed an interest in graffiti due to the pieces he saw in Bristol by 3D, who later quit painting and formed the band Massive Attack, Banksy decorates his own urban canvasses with unabashedly left-wing scenes of anti-authoritarian, anti-war and anti-capitalist whimsy that consciously set out to undermine the cultural status quo: Winston Churchill with a Mohawk, two policemen kissing, ten pound notes featuring Princess Diana in place of the Queen, a little girl cuddling up to a missile, a beefeater daubing ‘Anarchy’ on a wall, an Ethiopian child wearing a Burger King cardboard hat, Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald escorting Phan Thị Kim Phúc (the napalmed girl from Vietnam).

In 2005, he sprayed nine trompe-l’oeil scenes on the Palestinian side of the West Bank barrier, a four hundred and twenty-five mile barrier that separates Israel from Palestinian territories, showing satirically idyllic images of life on the other side of the barrier, which included a beach scene and mountain landscape. Sometimes, there are just words, in the same chunky typeface – puns and ironies, statements and incitements. At traditional landmarks, he often signs ‘This is not a photo opportunity’ or ‘Designated Picnic Area.’ On establishment buildings he may sign, ‘By Order. National Highways Agency. This Wall Is A Designated Graffiti Area.’ Come back to the latter in a few days and people will have obediently tagged the wall.

(You Can’t Beat the Feeling, from Wall and Piece)

Whilst his weapon of choice is the stencil (‘The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes for people to look at it’), this is not to say that Banksy’s subversive work is limited to the streets. In 2005, he succeeded in thoroughly embarrassing the floor monkeys at the British Museum by planting a hoax ‘cave painting’ of a man pushing a supermarket trolley (Early Man Goes To Market) in Gallery 49, which went unnoticed for three days. They later decided to add it to their permanent collection.

He has also produced numerous revisionist oil paintings – such as Mona Lisa with a yellow smiley face and a pastoral landscape surrounded by crime-scene tape – then, disguised in a trench coat and fake beard, no less, installed them, respectively in the Louvre and the Tate galleries. He did the same thing in 2005 in each of New York’s top four museums – the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. Of the four cuckoo pieces, he simply commented: ‘They’re good enough to be in there, so I don’t see why I should wait.’ Notable subversions include his reimagining of Monet’s Water Lily Pond, adapted to include urban detritus such as little and a shopping trolley in its reflective waters; and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, redrawn to show the characters in the diner glaring at an English football hooligan, dressed only in his Union Jack shorts, who has just thrown an object through the glass.

His first exhibition, Turf War, held in a London warehouse, featured paintings on live animals – such as pigs in police colours, sheep in concentration camp stripes and a cow covered in images of Andy Warhol’s visage. Despite the RSCPA deeming the conditions suitable, this did not prevent one nut-job, I mean over-zealous animal rights activist, from chaining herself to the railings in protest.

In 2006, he managed to place a life-size replica of a hooded Guantanamo Bay detainee inside the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland, California, in order to highlight the plight of terror suspects at the controversial detention centre in Cuba.

(Big Thunder, Disneyland and Wild Style, from Wall and Piece)

Explaining his taste for such thrill seeking excursions, Banksy simply comments:

…it's all part of the job description. Any idiot can get caught. The art to it is not getting picked up for it, and that's the biggest buzz at the end of the day because you could stick all my shit in Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on roller blades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting as it is when you go out and you paint something big where you shouldn't do. The feeling you get when you sit home on the sofa at the end of that, having a fag and thinking there's no way they're going to rumble me, it's amazing... better than sex, better than drugs, the buzz.

Last year, a Banksy-crafted image of a naked man hanging onto a bedroom window ledge on a wall at the side of a sexual health clinic located on Park Street, Bristol, sparked some controversy, with the Bristol City Council leaving it up to the public to decide whether it should stay or go. After a poll, a resounding 97% of local residents supported the stencil, and the city council decided that it should be left on the building.

In June 2007, Banksy recreated Stonehenge at the Glastonbury Festival. However, as the sculpture was located in the same field as the ‘Sacred Circle’ which has always had a ‘no plastic’ rule, many felt that the sculpture was inappropriate and the installation was itself covered in graffiti before the festival even opened. As someone who attended the festival, the installation seemed to be more celebrated that it was chastised and the added graffiti made the spectacle even more catching.

(Naked Man, Bristol, 2007, courtesy of The Gregg and Stonehenge, Glastonbury, 2007)

My personal favourite of recent times was his reverse-theft (read: glorified smuggling, but necessitating watermelon-sized cojones) of 500 ‘alternative’ versions of Paris Hilton’s self-titled album into a number of high-profile record stores around the UK. Banksy replaced Hilton’s songs with ‘remixed’ titles, such as ‘Why Am I Famous?’, ‘What Have I Done?’ and ‘What Am I For?’ Oh, did I mention that he also doctored the artwork to show the US socialite topless and with a dog’s head?

(probably neither the first or last time you will see Ms. Hilton topless)

In September 2006, he even managed to become the darling of Tinseltown, with glittering creatures from the Hollywood firmament such as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jude Law and Christina Aguilera, to name a few, attending the great man’s first large-scale US exhibition, entitled Barely Legal. The pièce de résistance at the show was the disconcerting presence of an elephant in the middle of the exhibition. Yes, you read that right, an elephant. On entering, visitors were presented with a flyer reading:

There’s an elephant in the room. There’s a problem with never talk about. The fact is that life isn’t getting any fairer. 1.7 billion people have no access to clean drinking water. 20 billion people live below the poverty line. Every day, hundreds of people are made to physically be sick by morons are art shows telling them how bad the world is but never actually doing something about it. Anybody want a free glass of wine?’

Whilst no-one will ever suggest that Banksy is remotely subtle, there was something exceedingly subversive with flying over to Los Angeles and doing this particular show. After all, L.A. is the origin of so much of the surface, surface, surface nonsense that boils Banksy’s blood so blatantly.

(Barely Legal exhibition, LA, 2006)

Also, in addition to self-publishing three mini-volumes of his work – Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall (2001), Existencilism (2002) and Cut It Out (2004) – the Random House published Wall and Piece has sold more than two hundred and fifty thousand copies.

This list goes on.

“I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit”

Whilst Banksy declares that the ‘art world’ is a ‘rest home for the over-privileged, the pretentious and the weak’ and that ‘every other type of art compared to graffiti is a step down’, his effect on the ‘biggest joke going’ and the way that graffiti/street art is perceived is undeniable.

In February 2007, Sotheby’s presented seven Banksy pieces (note that these were resales, as Banksy does not pimp his art out at auctions and suchlike) during an auction of contemporary art. A piece entitled Bombing Middle England (2001), an acrylic-and-spray stencil on canvas, featuring a trio of retirees playing boules with live shells, was estimated to bring in between thirty and a fifty thousand pounds. It sold for a hundred and two thousand. In April 2007, a piece entitled Space Girl and Bird sold at Bonham’s for around two hundred and eighty eight thousand pounds.

Rick Taylor, a Sotheby’s specialist in contemporary art, has proclaimed that Banksy is the ‘quickest-growing artist anyone has ever seen of all time’. Banksy was apparently far from pleased. To coincide with the second day of the Sotheby’s auctions, he updated his website front page with a new image featuring an auctioneer presiding over a rabid crowd, who in turn were bidding for a piece featuring the words, ‘I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit’.

(edited I Can’t Believe…, from Banksy’s website and Arse, from Wall and Piece)

Herein lies the dilemma. Banksy is vehemently opposed to becoming a commercialized part of the art establishment, stating that ‘I wouldn’t sell shit to Charles Saatchi. If I sell 55,000 books and however many screen prints, I don’t need one man to tell me I’m an artist’. However, in an interview with Banksy, Shepard Fairey, who is a genius in his own right, succinctly dissected the dichotomous fetishization of anti-capitalist propaganda and its subsequent appropriation by what Theodor Adorno coined the Culture Industry:

…you want your books to be cheap because they show the work in the context of the street, as well as the installations in museums and other pranks, which are actually honest representations of your work. But then, people want objects, so they’re going to want the canvasses and things like that, and you’re just kind of accepting that people fetishize objects and are willing to pay a lot for the status of owning something that they can hang up.

In a later interview with David Usborne, Banksy even doffed his cap to the all-powerful culture industry: ‘I love the way capitalism finds a place – even for its enemies. It’s definitely boom time in the discontent industry.’ Indeed, Banksy’s attitude to brands is ambivalent. Like Naomi Klein, he opposes corporate branding and has become his own brand in the process. Normally, I would now make a sexist comment about Naomi Klein being better looking than Banksy. You know, just for japes. However, after a quick look on Google images, I am firmly of the opinion that there is no way in the world that Banksy can be any more unattractive than Little Miss No Logo. Seriously, she is hideous.

Anyway, moving swiftly on, nowadays people sell forged ‘Banksies’ on the black market and manufacture stencil kits to allow hipster kids to produce their own. Does Banksy mind being ripped off? ‘No,’ he says, ‘I was a bootlegger for three years, so I don’t really have a leg to stand on.’

Whilst he views art as ‘one of the last great cartels’, as a ‘handful of people make it, a handful buy it and a handful show it,’ Banksy does not shy away from exhibiting in galleries when necessary. For instance, without a formal space it would have been impossible for him to display his livestock-come-artwork during his Turf War exhibition. Also, graffiti by its very nature is rather proscriptive, as most councils are committed to removing offensive graffiti within twenty-four hours. However, if it is ‘art’ in a gallery, the boundaries of taste are not so rigidly defined.

For instance, without the aid of a gallery setting, Banksy’s work depicting Jewish women at Bergen-Belsen, daubed in fluorescent lipstick, would never have seen the light of day on a street, because ‘it’s just blatantly offensive.’ But in a gallery, Banksy can place such a piece in context:

It's actually based on a diary entry from a colonel who liberated Bergen-Belsen. He described how they liberated this women-only camp, and a box of supplies turned up containing 400 sticks of lipstick, and he went nuts - 'Why are you sending me lipstick?' But he sent it out to the women, and they put it on each other, they did their hair; and because it gave them the will to live it was probably the best thing the soldiers did when they liberated that camp...
See, that's talking about how the application of paint can make a difference.

The Banksy Effect

That Banksy has unintentionally, inadvertently and somewhat reluctantly become the commercialized face of ‘street art’ has in turn resulted in what Marc at Wooster Collective has coined ‘The Banksy Effect’. Catchy, huh? Essentially, Marc proffers that it is widely accepted that most people need entry points to become comfortable with things that are new. To this end, by a quirk of fate Banksy has become the entry point to non-canonized contemporary art for millions of people worldwide.

Thanks to the extensive broadsheet and media coverage on the phenomenon that is Banksy, people are slowly becoming accustomed to the fact that they do not have to pay through the nose to attend formal art galleries, which generally contain traditionalist elitist representations of ‘art’ and are chosen by the few for benefit of the few. Instead, they have come to realise that real, grassroots art is all around them. Whether it be on the wall at the side of your local greasy spoon, or on a bridge on your way to work - all you have to do is look.

useless fact #5

During the ninth century, the Danes imposed a ‘nose’ tax on the Irish, so-called because those who avoided paying had their nostrils slit. Hence the term, ‘paying through the nose.’ No doubt you will sleep better now that the origin of that quirky oft-used phrase is cleared up. Or maybe not.

However, despite the obvious advantages of blowing the corrugated iron doors off an otherwise largely elitist boys club, some people insist on defending their territory like a rabid wolf defending its cubs. For instance, Charlie Brooker of The Guardian, the newspaper for those who like their broadsheet light on news, heavy on views and prefer their journalists to project their own academic and genealogical shortcomings via thinly-veiled and failed attempts to sound convincingly middle class, commented that Banksy is ‘often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that’ll do.’ In response, I offer the following, abridged and simplified for the benefit of all my ‘idiot’ readers: can anyone say ‘out of touch’?

(untitled, location unknown)

Unlike Mr. Brooker, I am firmly of the belief that the concept of ‘art’ is subjective. That he probably finds solace in dissecting the deep, intellectual meaning of a black canvas with a single white dot on it in his spare time is his choice. What he should not be propagating is a divide based on established preconceptions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. God forbid that the proletariat (or, if you prefer, ‘the great unwashed’) find a voice of their own? How very dare they find a vehicle from which they can express their own discontent in a manner that will resonate with their peers. How ghastly would that be? You, Mr. Brooker, by living in London, are depriving a village somewhere of an idiot. In contrast, here is what the right honourable Shephard Fairey’s observed when dissecting Banksy’s work:

[Banksy’s] works… are filled with imagery tweaked into metaphors that cross all language barriers. The images are brilliant and funny, yet so simple and accessible that even children can find the meaning in them: even if six-year-olds don’t know the first thing about culture wars, they have no trouble recognizing that something is amiss when they see a picture of the Mona Lisa holding a rocket launcher.

A lot of artists can be neurotic, self-indulgent snobs using art for their own catharsis, but BANKSY distances himself from his work, using art to plant the feelings of discontent and distrust of authority that anyone can experience when he prompts them to ask themselves one gigantic question: Why is this wrong? If it makes people feel and think, he’s accomplished his goal.

Similarly, Wooster Collective offer the following (admittedly romanticized) prediction as to the long-term effect that Banksy will have on the art world:

Like Andy Warhol before him, Banksy has almost single handedly redefined what art is to a lot of people who probably never felt they appreciated art before. By being an iconoclast, and in the process becoming a mythic hero for a lot of people, Banksy has become an incredible icon in our society. One that we think, when things are said and done, will be at the level of Warhol.

If Shepard Fairey ‘created the movement’ then Banksy has ‘created the market.’ Wall and Piece is available for purchase in almost every bookstore, music store and trendy boutique imaginable. The auctioneers at Sotheby’s now rub their hands together in glee when they see a certain six little letters. In essence, Banksy is the best thing that could have possibly ever happened to the street art movement. What he has done is prompt the recognition of an otherwise unacknowledged art form by, to use Mr. Brooker’s handy little black-and-white world definitions, both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

“The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man… what will sell.”

Unfortunately, this shift has polarized a lot of people. People like myself see it as being part of the greater good, as those who cannot afford ‘a Banksy’ are now using their feelers to find gems of their own and are actively buying pieces by other talented artists, who are part of the movement but who are not yet part of its market. Would such work have sold without the ‘Banksy effect’? Probably. But such sales would have generally been restricted to the few who were ‘in the know.’

Now, people who may not necessarily know the artists inside out are buying pieces because they like them. As such, prints from places such as Pictures on Walls have never sold out faster.

On the flip side are people such as Mr. Brooker (read: art fascists) and people who think that Banksy is a 'sell-out' for allowing his work to sell for exorbitant prices or for signing a publishing deal with Random House. This blog is not intended to be a forum to bash the delusional, so I will say no more on the former type of dissident other than what has already been said above. However, the latter group worry me. A small section of individuals seem to be incapable of untangling the dichotomy of the popular and the precarious balance between ‘keeping it real’ and ‘selling out’. These people would much rather artists such as Banksy (and their favourite musicians, authors, foods, clothing brands…) remain the dirty little hipster secret of their own little private boys (and girls) club. To this end, they are not dissimilar to high art fascists.

In my humble little opinion, there is nothing wrong with Banksy et al making money off something that (a) they continue to be exceptional at; and (b) they obviously eat, sleep and breathe. Personally, I am hoping to be exceptional at what I do. A healthy salary is obviously a bonus, but it is my ambition that drives me. If someone calls me a ‘sell-out’ because I have discarded my piercings of old, have developed a penchant for smart suits and spend my time flicking through statute books in order to give myself the best possibly opportunity of succeeding in my chosen profession, then they are an idiot.

On the other hand, if I were do something at the cost of my integrity or at odds with my beliefs, such as becoming a Tory politician, with the sole intention of making more money or to gain popularity, then that would make me a sell-out. There is a distinct difference between making a sacrifice for what you believe in and consciously selling your soul in order to make the leap from nobody to somebody.

For example, I would wager that Banksy is comfortably off. That is not to be begrudged. He has remained anonymous in order to avoid the perils of the British celebrity grinder yet remains current, as he allows his artwork to talk for him. Whilst the majority of us could not afford to purchase a bona fide Banksy from an auction, the nicely priced Wall and Piece has sold over a quarter of a million copies worldwide – giving almost everyone the opportunity to experience this gifted artist first hand. Has his work become sloppy and predictable? No. Is he mass producing everything from posters to mugs in order to take advantage of his current popularity spike? No. In fact, if you visit the ‘Shop’ section of his website, you will even find a selection of wallpapers, poster templates and postcard designs, accompanied by the following disclaimer:

Everything in the shop is free.

Simply download the file and process the artwork as per the serving suggestion.

(The screenprinting studio and ceramics workshop require are not included).

Please note:

Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti or mount exhibitions of screenprints in commercial galleries, so please don’t complain if you found them disappointing.

This ‘Shop’ is intended ‘for personal amusement only’ and ‘not for mass producing product.’ Does this make him a sell-out? I would suggest not. Also, what Banksy does not do is hide away from questions regarding the opportunities that he has had to cash-in on his success. He readily admits that over the past decade, the very brands that he despises and has so vehemently parodied have approached him to do advertising campaigns for them. According to the great man himself, despite him having turned down a number of Nike jobs in the past, they insist on contacting him every so often to see if he will buckle.

The list of jobs I haven’t done is so much bigger than the list of jobs I have done. It’s like a reverse CV… Nike have offered me mad money for doing stuff… [I turned them down because] I don’t need the money and I don’t like children working their fingers to the bone for nothing. I like that Jeremy Hardy line: ‘My eleven-year-old daughter asked me for a pair of trainers the other day. I said, ‘Well, you’re eleven, make ‘em yourself.’ I want to avoid that shit if at all possible.

In response to accusations of selling out, he has commented: ‘I give away thousands of paintings for free, how many more do you want?’ After all, he does not think it would be possible to ‘make art about world poverty and then trouser all the cash’, as it would be ‘an irony too far, even for me.’

Banksy himself makes a clear distinction between doing things with the sole aim of paying the bills and doing something that you believe in, such as his ‘perfectly symbiotic’ work on Blur’s Think Tank cover art. He has also done work for Greenpeace. Echoing the sentiments above, he comments that if ‘it’s something you actually believe in, doing something commercial doesn’t turn it to shit just because it’s commercial.’ Otherwise, you would have to be a ‘socialist rejecting capitalism altogether’.

(Blur’s Think Tank album art, 2003 and Greenpeace anti-deforestization poster)

“The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.”

On the 21^st May 2007, Banksy was awarded the accolade of ‘Art’s Greatest Living Briton,’ although, somewhat predictably, he did not attend the ceremony. It would appear that, love him or loathe him, Banksy is here to stay. The Guardian can huff and puff all until it is blue in the face.

To this end, Martin Bull has published a handy little guide for budding Banksy aficionados entitled Banksy: Locations and Tours, which provides three detailed London tours and details sixty-five graffiti locations in the capital, as well as including pieces by other artists such as Eine, Faile, El Chivo, Arofish, Space Invader, Blek Le Rat, D*face and Shephard Fairey. In addition to this, there are more Banksy fan groups on social networking websites than one person could possibly know what to do with. As Facebook seems to be de rigueur of such sites at the moment, here is a link its very own ‘Banksy Appreciation’ group.

Banksy not only remains current, but his artwork remains accessible rather than elitist, engaging rather than preaching, simple yet effective and subversive whilst simultaneously engendering its own commercialization. Every light-hearted piece is a bitter pill made easier to swallow and you do not have to possess an Arts and Humanities degree from a red brick university in order to appreciate Banksy’s call to arms.

In a nutshell, his work is the contemporary literalisation of Gramsci’s call for the subversion of the dominant cultural hegemony in order to help instigate revolution. With added jokes.

(Camp, from Wall and Piece)

posted by Si at 20:02

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