BANKSY
By
Cheryl Kobs
The one word that I can safely use to describe Banksy, as a person, would be mysterious. Banksy is a popular Street Artist that is responsible for some of the most subversive artwork created today. His art can be seen decorating buildings in cities like Chiapas, Mexico, Soho, London and Bristol, England. In Israel, Banksy painted nine paintings on the Israeli/West Bank barrier, one of which depicts a hole in the wall with a view of paradise on the other side. Banksy is also responsible for a painting on a wall in central Bristol of a naked man hanging from a bedroom window as another man looks out the window with his scantly clad wife standing behind him. The image sparked a lot of controversy but the Bristol City Counsel left the painting up to allow the town to decide whether it should stay or not. The town decided to keep it after an online poll said that 97% of the populous wanted to keep it. He has also placed multiple sculptures throughout the world. In September 2006, Banksy placed a blow-up doll dressed as a Guantanamo bay prisoner inside the scenery for the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California. It stood for and hour and a half before security removed it from the park. Banksy is probably best known for placing his own art pieces in prominent art museums throughout the world. Banksy will place these works on the walls of the museum and watch to see whether people notice the change. He has accomplished this in the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, The British Museum and Tate Britain gallery in London.
Nothing specific is known about Banksy. He has never revealed his identity to anyone. Even his agent, Steve Lazarides, has never seen the artist’s face. When Steve meets with Banksy, Banksy is always in disguise. Steve doesn’t even know where Banksy lives. According to an interview with Rico Gagliano of Marketplace Radio in Los Angeles, Steve Lazarides picks up to paintings made by Banksy in the back of a supermarket. Some would ask whether this is a smart marketing ploy, if it is a marketing ploy at all. How can you trust that the painting you are buying is actually by the artist Banksy when he is not there to confirm it? Unfortunately, Banksy currently has several warrants out for his arrest for several counts of vandalism so it would be impossible for him to reveal his identity at this point without facing jurisprudence. In addition, the subject of most of Banksy’s art is very political. Because we have no record of Banksy’s influences and background, it allows us to view him from clean slate with his art acting as the only introspection into his personality. It allows the viewer to take in the art at its most basic elements without the influence of the artist’s history in our way. Take for example the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci. Traditionally, we view it simply as a work of exquisite talent by a renaissance painter, but if we call to mind Da Vinci as a homosexual, and the idea that the Mona Lisa might be a female depiction of him, it changes our potential interpretation of the painting. These ideas do not stand between the viewer and the message in Banksy’s art.
One of my favorite pieces is The Girl with a Bomb. The image is a stencil applied with spray paint on a whitewashed brick wall on London’s Brick Lane first seen in January 2004. The image is of a girl in her teens hugging a bomb very affectionately. The artist is speaking about the way that the next generation in our world will have a great affection for violence and the use of atom bombs as a solution. The heart in bright red above the girl’s head helps to secure our interpretation of her feelings of affection for the nuclear warhead.
The piece uses two different colors of paint, but by using shading and the white of the wall behind the piece, Banksy still manages to give it depth. The girl is painted mostly white, except for the back of her sweater and her hair. Using a stencil also allowed Banksy to create a fair amount of detail around the eyes and facial features. She almost resembles an old 1950’s poster or advertisement. This gives the painting a homely, comfortable feeling by relating it to an era where America was in its prime, economically and socially. This is in strong contrast to the bomb that she is embracing so tenderly. The bomb is completely black with slight white shading at the far right side. The bomb is generally depicted as a negative symbol of destruction and chaos. This should not be something that a child is clinging to like a favorite teddy bear, but she is. Like any eerie affirmation of the direction in which this world is heading, this piece speaks volumes about the place that war and terror are taking in our lives.
This has influenced me both emotionally and artistically. Not this piece alone but many of Banksy’s works speak to the worries and concerns of an ever changing world. The way that Banksy can relate such innocent, untainted images to such crude subject matter as war, abuse, starvation, federal involvement and adultery shows a great amount of talent. I am inspired to use such creative and introspective methods to get the point of my art across. Banksy’s art is also very simple in design. To carry a stencil to a perfectly public place and apply it without people noticing has to create a challenge. The piece must be simple enough to take only a small amount of time to apply, yet the message needs to show very clearly through the technical simplicity.
Banksy is all about the art. He keeps the designs simple enough to be easily interpreted by any onlooker, but subversive enough to make true artists and politicos take notice. His mysterious personality has made state officials and celebrities all over the world perk up and pay attention. His art inspires people to not hold back what they think. It speaks what many of us have wanted to say, but have not had the outlet in which to do so. There is a strange sense of freedom in Banksy’s work because he is creating what he wants without worrying about what critics think of his work. If he cared about the critics, he would have reveled himself by now and taken the credit and fame he deserves. His goal is not fame or notoriety, but to communicate the ideas depicted in his images. Oh, to have that freedom as an artist is a great thing. We have that freedom and we should not be afraid to use it. That is what Banksy inspires me to remember. We are free.
