“People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish…but that’s only if it’s done properly” -Banksy
What can I say? I have never seen the man behind the plan nor do I want to.
He could be fat, hairy, and bald…I would still love Banksy. Shit, he could be a woman and I would love him even more. (I know that doesn’t make any sense)
What’s not to love? The guy has taken graffiti to another realm; one that involves small acts of ‘terrorism’ for the good of humankind.
His works of art are cute, fun(ny), and smart; it’s not an easy task for any artist to accomplish let alone one whose studio / gallery is the streets! It takes a rather large set of cojones to work above the law, which one has to admire even if one doesn’t like graffiti.
There’s nothing better than politically charged art and Banksy does it best…
Military choppers topped off with little pink bows, the trompe-l’oeil painting that he did on a security fence in the West Bank which depicts two children digging in the sand ‘near’ the wall that separates the Palestinian children from ‘paradise’, two (same-sex) cops (bobbys) locked in a passionate kiss, a little girl carrying her ‘Dorothy’ style basket comes ‘eye’ to eye with a surveillance camera that sits a top a real bush. Banksy is a master at utilizing his natural and/or unnatural surroundings to create an amalgamation of the real and the unreal; there seems to be no end to his imagination.
What about the Paris Hilton ‘performance’ piece! One of my personal favorites, Banksy replaced hundreds of Hilton’s CDs with his own CD which contained songs with titles like - What Am I For? Why Am I Famous? What Have I Done? Questions I’ve been asking since this girl hit the TV and scandal rags a few years ago. He then distributed the album across 48 record shops in the UK He also replaced the original photos of Hilton with doctored photos of Hilton with a dog’s head (perhaps Tinkerbell’s mug) and topless no less. Banksy left the original bar code so that people would buy the CD completely unaware of the changes (for the better) that he had made. Brilliant!
Disneyland in Cali’ had the privilege of being duped by Banksy when the artist smuggled a life-sized replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee onto the Big Thunder Mountain Ride. The ‘detainee’ was detained on the ride for 90 minutes before the ride was shut down and the ‘detainee’ was ‘released’ unharmed. A remarkable feat considering one can’t take a hit of weed without some FBI type popping up out the ground to bust your ass! The happiest place on earth ain’t so happy if you get on Mickey’s bad side; just ask any gay couple who made the mistake of holding hands at the park five years ago. Busted!
My absolute favorite Stunt a la Banksy is the museum hack! This shit is just too much…
Banksy took the New York art world by storm when he installed his own work into four major art museums- The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Natural History. He modified several paintings and installed the pieces in his disguise of prosthetic nose and beard; the pieces went unnoticed by museum authorities for hours, days and in some cases the pieces actually made it into the permanent collection.
One of the pieces, a Warhol-esque Discount Soup Can, hung on the wall of the Museum of Modern Art for 6 days. ‘After sticking up the picture I took five minutes to watch what happened next. A sea of people walked up, stared and left looking confused and slightly cheated. I felt like a true modern artist.’ –Banksy, Wall and Piece
He did the same in England and France…
‘A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.’ –Banksy, Wall
and Piece
And of course he’s a wiz at poetry…
Love Poem:
Beyond watching eyes
With sweet and tender kisses
Our souls reached out to each other
In breathless wonder
And when I awoke
From a vast and smiling peace
I found you bathed in morning light
Quietly studying
All the messages on my phone
He likes trees and water…
Only when the last tree
Has been cut down
And the last river
Has dried to a trickle
Will man finally realize
That we cannot eat money
And reciting old proverbs
Makes you sound like a twat
‘Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions and buy records by the billions. We the people, affect the making and the quality of most of our culture, but not our art.
The art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Only a few people in the world have any real say. When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.’ –Banksy, Wall and Piece
“How illegal is it to vandalize a wall if the wall itself has been deemed unlawful by the International Court of Justice? The Israeli government is building a wall surrounding the occupied Palestinian territories. It stands three times the height of the Berlin wall and will eventually run for over 700km - the distance from London to Zurich. The International Court of Justice last year ruled the wall and its associated regime is illegal. It essentially turns Palestine into the world’s largest open-air prison.” –Banksy regarding his ‘Wall Project’
“The art world is the biggest joke going,” he has said. “It’s a rest home for the over privileged, the pretentious, and the weak.” –Banksy (The New Yorker May 14, 2007Banksy Was Here: The Invisible Man of Graffiti Art –Lauren Collins) Well said…
Banksy has a shop where everything is free, simply download the file and process the artwork as per the serving suggestion
http://www.banksy.co.uk/
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