Banksy

Banksy is a well-known pseudo-anonymous^[1][2] British graffiti artist. He is believed to be a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol^[1] and to have been born in 1974,^[3] but there is substantial public uncertainty about his identity and personal and biographical details.^[4] According to Tristan Manco, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier engineer, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s."^[5] His artworks are often-satirical pieces of art on topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti writing with a distinctive stencilling technique, is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass who maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His art has appeared in cities around the world.^[6] Banksy's work was born out of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.

Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti or mount exhibitions of screenprints in commercial galleries.^[7] Art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell his street art on location and leave the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder. ^[8]

Banksy's "The Flower Chucker" is included the feature film The Age of Stupid to represent all modern art stored in an archive after the end of the world as we know it.

Career

Naked Man image by Banksy, on the wall of a sexual health clinic 1 in Park Street, Bristol. Following popular support, the City Council have decided it will be allowed to remain - (wider view).

Banksy started as a freehand graffiti artist 1992-1994^[9] as one of Bristol's DryBreadZ Crew (DBZ), often assisting writers Kato and Tes.^[10] He was inspired by local artists and his work was part of the larger Bristol underground scene. From the start he used stencils as elements of his freehand pieces, too ^[11]. In 1998 he arranged the enormous "Walls On Fire" graffiti jam along with fellow Bristol graffiti legend Inkie on the site of the future "@t Bristol" development.^[12] The weekend-long event drew artists from all over the UK and Europe, and his organisation of the event established his name within the European graffiti scene. By 2000 he had turned to the art of stencilling after realising how much less time it took to complete a "piece." He claims he changed to stencilling whilst he was hiding from the police under a train carriage, when he noticed the stencilled serial number^[13] and employing this technique soon became more widely noticed for his art around Bristol and London.^[13]

Stencil on the waterline of The Thekla, an entertainment boat in central Bristol - (wider view). The image of Death is based on a 19th century etching illustrating the pestilence of The Great Stink.^[14]

Banksy's stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist or anti-establishment. Subjects include animals such as monkeys and rats, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly.

Anarchist rat.

In late 2001, on a trip to Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, he met up with the Gen-X pastellist, visual activist, and recluse James DeWeaver[1] in Byron Bay, where he stenciled a parachuting rat with clothes pin on nose above a toilet at the Arts Factory Lodge. Unfortunately this stencil can no longer be located. He also makes stickers (the Neighbourhood Watch subvert) and sculpture (the murdered phonebox), and was responsible for the cover art of Blur's 2003 album Think Tank.

2002

On 19 July 2002, Banksy's first Los Angeles show debuted at 33 1/3 Gallery, a small Silverlake venue owned by Frank Sosa. The show, entitled Existencilism, was curated by 33 1/3 Gallery, Malathion, Funk Lazy Promotions, and B+.^[15]

2003

In 2003 in a show called "Turf War", held in a warehouse, Banksy painted on animals. Although the RSPCA declared the conditions suitable, an animal rights activist chained herself to the railings in protest.^[16] He later moved on to producing subverted paintings; one example is Monet's Water Lily Pond, adapted to include urban detritus such as litter and a shopping trolley floating in its reflective waters; another is Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, redrawn to show that the characters are looking at a British football hooligan, dressed only in his Union Flag underpants, who has just thrown an object through the glass window of the cafe. These oil paintings were shown at a twelve day exhibition in Westbourne Grove, London in 2005.^[17]

Banksy art in Brick Lane, East End, 2004.

2004

• In August 2004, Banksy produced a quantity of spoof British £10 notes substituting the picture of the Queen's head with Princess Diana's head and changing the text "Bank of England" to "Banksy of England."* SEE PHOTO Someone threw a large wad of these into a crowd at Notting Hill Carnival that year, which some recipients then tried to spend in local shops. These notes were also given with invitations to a picturesonwalls.com Santas Ghetto exhibition. The individual notes have since been selling on eBay for about £200 each. A Limited run of 50 signed posters containing 10 uncut notes were also produced and sold by pictures on walls for £100 each to commemorate the death of Princess Diana. One of these sold in October 2007 at Bonhams auction house in London for £24,000.

A stencil of Charles Manson in a prison suit, hitchhiking to anywhere, Archway, London.

2006

• Banksy held an exhibition called Barely Legal, billed as a "three day vandalised warehouse extravaganza" in Los Angeles, on the weekend of 16 September. The exhibition featured a live "elephant in a room", painted in a pink and gold floral wallpaper pattern.^[18]
• After Christina Aguilera bought an original of Queen Victoria as a lesbian and two prints for £25,000,^[19] on 19 October 2006 a set of Kate Moss paintings sold in Sotheby's London for £50,400, setting an auction record for Banksy's work. The six silk-screen prints, featuring the model painted in the style of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe pictures, sold for five times their estimated value. His stencil of a green Mona Lisa with real paint dripping from her eyes sold for £57,600 at the same auction.^[20]

2007

• On 7 February 2007, Sotheby's auction house in London auctioned three works, reaching the highest ever price for a Banksy work at auction: over £102,000 for his Bombing Middle England. Two of his other graffiti works, Balloon Girl and Bomb Hugger, sold for £37,200 and £31,200 respectively, which were well above their estimated prices.^[21] The following day's auction saw a further three Banksy works reach soaring prices. Ballerina With Action Man Parts reached £96,000; Glory sold for £72,000; Untitled (2004) sold for £33,600 - all prices being significantly above estimated values.^[22] To coincide with the second day of auctions, Banksy updated his website with a new image of an auction house scene showing people bidding on a picture that said, "I Can't Believe You Morons Actually Buy This Shit."^[23]

• In February 2007, the owners of a house with a Banksy mural on the side in Bristol decided to sell the house through an art gallery after offers fell through because the prospective buyers wanted to remove the mural. It is listed as a mural which comes with a house attached.^[24]

Banksy on Pulp Fiction. Image since removed by graffiti cleanup crews.

Banksy on Pulp Fiction again.

• In April 2007, Transport for London painted over Banksy's iconic image of a scene from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, with Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta clutching bananas instead of guns. Although the image was very popular, Transport for London claimed that the "graffiti" created a general atmosphere of neglect and social decay which in turn encourages crime.^[25]

• On 27 April 2007, a new record high for the sale of Banksy's work was set with the auction of the work 'Space Girl & Bird' fetching £288,000 (US$576,000), around 20 times the estimate at Bonhams of London.^[26] On 21 May 2007 Banksy gained the award for Art's Greatest living Briton. Banksy, as expected, did not turn up to collect his award, and continued with his notoriously anonymous status.

• On 4 June 2007, it was reported that Banksy's The Drinker had been stolen.^[27][28]

• In October 2007, most of his works offered for sale at Bonhams auction house in London sold for more than twice their reserve price.^[29]

• Banksy made a tribute art piece over his famous Pulp Fiction piece. The tribute was for 19-year-old British graffiti artist OZONE, who was hit by an underground train in Barking, East London, along with fellow artist WIZE, on 12 January 2007.^[30] The piece was of an angel wearing a bullet-proof vest, holding a skull. He also wrote a note on his website, saying:

The last time I hit this spot I painted a crap picture of two men in banana costumes waving hand guns. A few weeks later a writer called Ozone completely dogged it and then wrote 'If it's better next time I'll leave it' in the bottom corner.
When we lost Ozone we lost a fearless graffiti writer and as it turns out a pretty perceptive art critic.
Ozone - rest in peace.

Ozone's Angel.

• Banksy has published a "manifesto" on his website.^[31] The text of the manifesto is credited as the diary entry of one Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin, DSO, which is exhibited in the Imperial War Museum. It describes how a shipment of lipstick to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp immediately after its liberation at the end of World War II helped the internees regain their humanity. However, as of 18 January 2008, Banksy's Manifesto has been substituted with Graffiti Heroes #03 that describes Peter Chappell's graffiti quest of the 1970s that worked to free George Davis of his imprisonment.^[32]

• A small number of Banksy's works can be seen in the movie Children of Men, including a stenciled image of two policemen kissing and another stencil of a child looking down a shop.

• In the 2007 film Shoot 'Em Up starring Clive Owen, Banksy's tag can be seen on a dumpster in the film's credits.

• Banksy, who deals mostly with Lazarides Gallery in London, claims that the exhibition at Vanina Holasek Gallery in New York (his first major exhibition in that city) is unauthorized. The show featured 62 of his paintings and prints. He also claimed that the showing of his work in Bethlehem was also unauthorized.^[33]

2008

• Over the weekend 3-5 May in London, Banksy hosted an exhibition called The Cans Festival. It was situated on Leake Street, a road tunnel formerly used by Eurostar underneath London Waterloo station. Graffiti artists with stencils were invited to join in and paint their own artwork, as long as it didn't cover anyone else's.^[34] Artists included Blek le Rat, Broken Crow, C215, Cartrain, Dolk, Dotmasters, J.Glover, Eine, Eelus, Hero, Pure evil, and Tom Civil.

Work on building in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, August 2008

• In late August 2008, marking the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the associated levee failure disaster, Banksy produced a series of works in New Orleans, Louisiana (mostly on buildings derelict since the disaster).[2]

• A stencil painting attributed to Banksy appeared at a vacant petrol station in the Ensley neighbourhood of Birmingham, Alabama on August 29 as Hurricane Gustav approached the New Orleans area. The painting depicting a hooded member of the Ku Klux Klan hanging from a noose was quickly covered with black spray paint and later removed altogether.^[35]

• His first official exhibition in New York, the "Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill," opened October 5, 2008. The animatronic pets in the store window include a mother hen watching over her baby Chicken McNuggets as they peck at a barbecue sauce packet, and a rabbit putting makeup on in a mirror.^[36]

One nation under CCTV.^[37]

• The Westminster City Council stated in October 2008 that the work "One Nation Under CCTV", painted in April 2008 will be painted over as it is graffiti. The council says it will remove any graffiti, regardless of the reputation of its creator, and specifically stated that Banksy has no more right to paint graffiti than a child.^[37]

Art pieces

In addition to his artwork, Banksy has claimed responsibility for a number of high profile art pieces, including the following:

• At London Zoo, he climbed into the penguin enclosure and painted "We're bored of fish" in seven foot high letters.^[38]
• At Bristol Zoo, he left the message 'I want out. This place is too cold. Keeper smells. Boring, boring, boring.' in the elephant enclosure.^[39]
• In March 2005, he placed subverted artworks in the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.^[40]
• He put up a subverted painting in London's Tate Britain gallery.
• In May 2005 Banksy's version of a primitive cave painting depicting a human figure hunting wildlife whilst pushing a shopping trolley was hung in gallery 49 of the British Museum, London. Upon discovery, they added it to their permanent collection.^[41]
• Banksy has sprayed "This is not a photo opportunity" on certain photograph spots.

• In August 2005, Banksy painted nine images on the Israeli West Bank barrier, including an image of a ladder going up and over the wall and an image of children digging a hole through the wall.^[42][43].

(see also : other paintings of Banksy on the Israeli West Bank barrier)

• In April 2006, Banksy created a sculpture based on a crumpled red phone box with a pickaxe in its side, apparently bleeding, and placed it in a street in Soho, London. It was later removed by Westminster Council. BT released a press release, which said: "This is a stunning visual comment on BT's transformation from an old-fashioned telecommunications company into a modern communications services provider."^[44]
• In June 2006, Banksy created an image of a naked man hanging out of a bedroom window on a wall in central Bristol. The image sparked some controversy, with the Bristol City Council leaving it up to the public to decide whether it should stay or go.^[45] After an internet discussion in which 97% (all but 6 people) supported the stencil, the city council decided it would be left on the building.^[45]
• In August/September 2006, Banksy replaced up to 500 copies of Paris Hilton's debut CD, Paris, in 48 different UK record stores with his own cover art and remixes by Danger Mouse. Music tracks were given titles such as "Why am I Famous?", "What Have I Done?" and "What Am I For?". Several copies of the CD were purchased by the public before stores were able to remove them, some going on to be sold for as much as £750 on online auction websites such as eBay. The cover art depicted Paris Hilton digitally altered to appear topless. Other pictures feature her with a dog's head replacing her own, and one of her stepping out of a luxury car, edited to include a group of homeless people, which included the caption "90% of success is just showing up".^[46][47][48]
• In September 2006, Banksy dressed an inflatable doll in the manner of a Guantanamo Bay detainment camp prisoner (orange jumpsuit, black hood, and handcuffs) and then placed the figure within the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California.^[49][50] More recently his work has appeared on Melrose.^[51]

Technique

ATM attacking a girl, Rosebery Avenue, London, January 2008.

Asked about his technique, Banksy said "I use whatever it takes. Sometimes that just means drawing a moustache on a girl's face on some billboard, sometimes that means sweating for days over an intricate drawing. Efficiency is the key".^[52]

Stencils are traditionally hand drawn or printed onto sheets of acetate or card, before being cut out by hand. Because of the secretive nature of Banksy's work and identity, it is uncertain what techniques he uses to generate the images in his stencils, though it is assumed he uses computers for some images due to the photocopy nature of much of his work.

It has been rumoured that as Banksy was starting to do graffiti that he was always too slow and was either caught or could never finish the art in the one sitting. So he devised a series of intricate stencils to minimise time and overlapping of the colour.

Identity

Banksy's real name is not, as is commonly believed and has been widely reported, Robert or Robin Banks. ^{[53][54] [55]} His year of birth has been given as 1974.^[41]

Simon Hattenstone from Guardian Unlimited is one of the very few people to have interviewed him face-to-face. Hattenstone describes him as "a cross of Jimmy Nail and British rapper Mike Skinner" and "a 28 year old male who showed up wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a silver tooth, silver chain, and one silver earring".^[56]

The registrant of Banksy's website is Steve Lazarides, a photographer. Lazarides is Banksy's agent. Lazarides has a gallery on Greek Street in London's Soho called Laz Inc, where Banksy originals can be bought.

Banksy's parents think their son is a painter and decorator.^[57]

In May 2007, an extensive article written by Lauren Collins of the New Yorker re-opened the Banksy-identity controversy citing a 2004 photograph of the artist that was taken in Jamaica during the Two-Culture Clash project and later published in The Evening Standard in 2004.

In October 2007, a story on the BBC website featured a photo allegedly taken by a passer-by in Bethnal Green, London, purporting to show Banksy at work with an assistant, scaffolding and a truck. The story confirms that Tower Hamlets Council in London has decided to treat all Banksy works as vandalism and remove them.^[58]

In July 2008, it was claimed by The Mail on Sunday that Banksy's real name is Robin Gunningham.^[59][60] His agent has refused to confirm or deny these reports.

Banksy himself states, on his website "I am unable to comment on who may or may not be banksy, but anyone described as being 'good at drawing' doesn't sound like banksy to me."^[61]

Controversy

In 2004, Banksy walked into the Louvre in Paris and hung on a wall a picture he had painted resembling the Mona Lisa but with a yellow smiley face. Though the painting was hurriedly removed by the museum staff, it and its counterpart, temporarily on unknown display at the Tate Britain, were described by Banksy as 'shortcuts'. He is quoted as saying: "To actually [have to] go through the process of having a painting selected must be quite boring, It's a lot more fun to go and put your own one up."^[62]

Peter Gibson, a spokesperson for Keep Britain Tidy, asserts that Banksy's work is simple vandalism,^[63] and Diane Shakespeare, an official for the same organisation, was quoted as saying: "We are concerned that Banksy's street art glorifies what is essentially vandalism".^[64]

In June 2007 Banksy created a circle of plastic portable toilets, said to resemble Stonehenge at the Glastonbury Festival. As this was in the same field as the "sacred circle" it was felt by many to be inappropriate and his installation was itself vandalized before the festival even opened. However, the intention had always been for people to climb on and interact with it. The installation was nicknamed "Portaloo Sunset" and "Bog Henge" by Festival goers. Michael Eavis admitted he wasn't fond of it, and the portaloos were removed before the 2008 festival.

Banksy's "Stonehenge" from portable toilets at the Glastonbury Festival, June 2007

Quotations

If you have a statue in the city centre, you could go past it every day on your way to school and never even notice it, right - but as soon as someone puts a traffic cone on its head, you've made your own sculpture.

—Banksy, in The Independent^[65]

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

—Banksy

People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly.

—Banksy

Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a fucking sharp knife to it.

—Banksy

Bibliography

Banksy has self-published several books that contain photographs of his work in various countries as well as some of his canvas work and exhibitions, accompanied by his own writings:

• Banksy, Banging Your Head Against A Brick Wall (2001).
• Banksy, Existencilism (2002).
• Banksy, Cut it Out (2004).
• Banksy, Wall and Piece (2005)

Random House published Banksy, Wall and Piece in 2005. It contains a combination of images from his three previous books, as well as some new material.^[13]

Two books authored by others on his work were published in 2006 & 2007:

• Martin Bull, Banksy Locations and Tours: A Collection of Graffiti Locations and Photographs in London (2006 - with new editions in 2007 and 2008).
• Steve Wright, Banksy's Bristol: Home Sweet Home (2007)

References

External links

• Banksy's website
• Banksy forum
• Banksy resource
• Galleries of Banksy's work:
• Banksy Gallery and information
• Catalog of Banksy artworks
  • Photo pool
  • Banksy mobile home graffiti video
  • Banksy pictures
  • Banksy work in Liverpool, 2004
  • ekosystem.org (2001-2008)
  • Banksy on artofthestate
  • Banksy Photos & Discussion
  • Vote on Banksy's work
  • pbase.com search
  • Jon Marsh
• Locations of work
  • A Zeemaps map of Banksy locations
  • Banksy locations and tours (2008 edition)

Articles and media

• Banksy's Cans Festival London
• Banksy: Barely Legal Los Angeles
• Banksy Unmasked
• Maps and details of Banksy's works in Bristol
• Video report of Banksy in Palestine
• Article on Wall and Piece
• Video reportage of the 'Illusive Banksy'
• Art Attack from Wired
• Simon Hattenstone interviews Banksy
• Radio story about Banksy from U.S. public radio program 'Marketplace'
• Guardian article, 17 Sept 2006, about Banksy
• The London Paper video news clip, 1 March 2007, about Banksy exhibition in Knightsbridge
• BBC News article regarding Banksy mural being painted over in Bristol
• Banksy Piece
• "Banksy Was Here: the invisible man of graffiti art", The New Yorker, 14 May 2007
• "I Am Banksy", Esquire, December 2005
• Complex Magazine : The New Yorker Helps Unveil Banksy: The Not-So-Invisible Man of Graffiti
• SWINDLE Magazine interview with BANKSY
• Against the Wall: Banksy in the Holy Land, Sky News, 3 December 2007
• "The Guerilla Street Artist Who Rages Against The Market Machine", Style Century Magazine, June 2008
• "Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill" photos at BBC News.com. Collected 10 October 2008