Dark humor from a darkened alley with a sarcastic and subversive edge to the message of the medium defines the street art mission of the artist known as Banksy, the UK’s rebel with a caustic cause. Banksy is an eclectic enigma that administers electrically charged sociological enemas as an "enemy of the state" to the social structure of that which is Great Britain...The UK....England...home to Churchill and Victoria and the Beatles...yeah, yeah, yeah. The divine province of princes and blue bloods, Round Heads and Round Tables, the Church of,,, and the Bank of... both OF England. Today, the Royals live it up in luxury at the expense of the public who may protest quietly about the impropriety of the class system, yet they cheer madly and proudly when the Royals parade through Piccadilly. The Brits are bizarre in that they are proud of their poverty. They are a curious people those Brits, schizoid to be sure, they are dead set against the system, but give them a soccer match against Portugal and all hell breaks loose as they scream in drunken unison as one voice...God Save the Queen! Lets face it...the Royals know how to keep the protest at a minimum...give a Brit a keg of ale and a football and it's like giving out free heroin in Thompkins Square in New York. Smile and wave Queenie...now, let the revolution begin you bitch!
On one hand you have a hard core band of activists who engage in street fighting tactics including the Irish who plant bombs, in order (borrowing a phrase from Paul McCartney) "to give Ireland back to the Irish." Then there is Banksy! Part political activist and film director, he is propelled along his proletarian path proletarian fueled with the nervous energy of a street junkie with collapsed green and black veins looking for a fix as he adorns the buildings of London with satirical, and some say, subversive graffiti aimed at the social order of England. Crowned heads will roll, or at least they will shake their heads at these artistic attacks of Banksy's aimed at the throne. The Queen Mum keeps mum about such goings on, and like the ostrich, the Royal Family buries it's collective head in the sands of tradition. Banksy has become the 21st Century Robin Hood with a spray can, causing political grief to the political structure of an archaic social system of rule by divine right. Kings and Queens in the 21st Century? What would Gandhi say? "Toss the bastards out!"
Banksy gives a proletarian voice to the voiceless of England’s urban environs awash with the unwashed homeless, squatters, and rebels. While the BBC shoves the status quo down the throats of viewers, and newspapers do all they can to keep Buckingham Palace and the throne from being overthrown, Banksy uses his art to present the yang to the yin of British society. Many adore his adornments on building facades, others declare the facades are macabre and have reduced his art through critique as flagrant vagrant vandalism. The murals and artwork also help dress up an otherwise bleak faceless urban landscape by giving it a near dreamlike drag queen make-up makeover that certainly inspires thought and imagination..and in many cases activism and street action. On a scale of one to ten on the Royal Family's hit parade of enemies, Banksy rates slightly lower than a bomber from the Irish Republican Army. The House of Lords and Commons have a common ambition. To put Banksy in the Tower of London and throw away the key, except he would only spray paint the tower while listening to Led Zeppelin. One thing for sure...to make lemon out of political lemonade...you can bank on Banksy!
Who is Banksy? Why is Banksy? To understand who he is and where he came from, we have to look at his emergence from the primordial waters of Bristol’s art scene, which in the UK was about as underground as it gets. Think Andy Warhol and his mad Chelsea enclave, or Berlin and Paris in the late 1920's. Bristol became the aerosol arsenal during the 1980's. Banksy born in 1974 was a perfect fit for the punk bohemian scene that blossomed with collaborations between visual street artists and musicians who grooved on experimental industrial jazz influenced music with a hypodermic needle fully loaded with the boom boom rock and roll rock-a-billy narcotic. Graffiti in Bristol was epidemic Buildings...bridges...lamps...anything with a surface sufficed. The Bristol scene itself was inspired by the French street punk artist known simply as Blek Le Rat who began the big Bolshevik bang of street art in Paris in 1981. Banksy admits he was under the influence of Le Rat as well as another dabbler called 3D who later was a founding member of the art subversive group who named themselves, Massive Attack.
Bristol itself can be characterized as delightfully diverse in multi-culturalism thanks to an influx of immigrants and artists from across Europe and many from the so-called Third World. I have no idea where the Third World is...I looked on a map..nada..but think it is just left of Middle Earth or Oz. At first Bristol exploded with a melting pot of musicians, especially reggae followed by and mixing like nitrous oxide with a prevalent punk scene...spiked purple hair in a purple haze with a halo of Clockwork Orange mixing it up musically with dreadlocks and Rasta. The music by one group, Blue Lines, evolved into what one music critic described as a cross between funkadelic, psychedelic and a dash of Mahavishnu Orchestra. Blue Lines music was James Dean angst with the emotion of the "The War of 1812 Overture"
This was the compost pile of art and music that gave birth to Bansky. While the bands used sparse instrumentation, Banksy uses very few colors in his creations preferring the almost Alfred Hitchcock’s early works in film noir black and white for that near blank bleak effect. His topics, unlike San Francisco's cavorting whale murals however, deal with subjects of poverty, war and class struggle. He chose the art of stenciling as he could complete projects faster and the root of his evolvment came when as a graffiti artist he was hiding from police in a lorry. The lorry had a stenciled number on it for identification and Banksy was hooked on the styling and began employing it as a tool of his trade.
As for grafitti...nothing gets under the Banksy blanket than having it referred to as "vandalism" so makes sure his work is prominent on buildings. Today, his street art whether stencil, or if it originates in a spray can or materializes in one of his sculptures, is highly sought after by collectors. He does not sell his art or reproductions but unscrupulous sellers of art sell his art to buyers right on the street although they have no claim to it. Once sold...getting the art off the street is the buyer’s problem! Ever try to move a one story building with a mural of a bomb tossing child trying to off the pig so to speak?
Banksy also is a film maker. Not Coppola maybe, but perhaps, early Warhol with shades of his film "Trash" with Joe Delassadro, where the Banksy cinematic offering called "Exit Through the Gift Shop, billed as the worlds "first street art disaster film" which debuted at Sundance, and subsequently was nominated for the Academy Award for best Docu in 2011. By 2014 he was awarded Person of the Year at the Webby Awards so eat your heart out Time Magazine and the Brothers Warner.
So can you Bank on Banksy? Damn straight you can. In 2004 Banksy took on the Bank of England along with the Queen by producing a stash of 10 pound notes, all counterfeit I assure you in true Banksy spoof and parody. Instead of the Queens head on the note, he transplanted the image of the head of Princess Di, and instead of Bank of England..simply to Banksy of England. These notes became the coveted currency of the underground realm at a festival someone set loose thousands of them to the crowd who not only hungrily grabbed them up but tried to spend them at local stores and bars. Other similar events occurred at other festivals and Banksy notes became all the rage...recently on EBay...they were selling for over $200 bucks each..so yeah, you can Bank on Banksy. There were also a limited run of posters commemorating the death of Princess Di. Each poster contained ten of the fake bills and sold at auction for $24,000 each. Even stranger?
After Christina Aguillera bought an original Banksy of Queen Victoria as a lesbian along with two prints of same, she shelled out 25,000 pounds for the lot. Use your currency calculator for that one. He also did a stencil of Charles Manson in a prison suit, hitchhiking to anywhere, but to my knowledge hasn't sold yet. 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. Now….That's our Banksy!