Authors: Will Ellsworth-Jones
Banksy (38 page)
His achievement is extraordinary. It is his own unique talent, nourished in the key years by the showmanship of Steve Lazarides, that has enabled him to bypass the London cognoscenti and get to
where he is today. His art has attracted a whole new audience to a world badly in need of new fans. But perhaps he now has to accept that while he is a very good artist and a very good film-maker,
he is no longer part of the subculture he sprang from. He is not a revolutionary and never will be, although images like the girl floating with her balloons over the Israeli wall, the OAPs using
bombs as bowls, the CCTV cameras watching over the idyllic countryside, need no thesis alongside them and speak directly and succinctly to the viewer. There are times when his pronouncements sound
pompous and irritating – clichés wrapped up as deep thoughts. But the images are different – they make us admire him, make us laugh and make us think, not so much about what the
painting means but about the
subjects he has taken on. As for his film, while people argue about
Exit Through the Gift Shop
they tend to forget that it is a wonderful
commentary on the way that art can be produced and marketed in the twenty-first century.
And that should be enough. Perhaps the time has come when he will have to change his own rules. He can remain sort of anonymous for as long as he likes, but he cannot remain the subversive
street rebel for ever, juggling £5 Molotov cocktail posters with £50,000 pieces in the auction rooms. The more Banksy and his team – which is tighter than ever – try to
control his image, to authorise his unauthorised life, to pretend he is the same rebel he was a decade ago, the more difficult it becomes and the more they cloud his enormous achievements.
Eventually his joke
I can’t believe you morons actually buy this shit
might begin to wear thin.
There are two Banksy websites. www.banksy.co.uk is the one where you will find the biggest selection of his art. When the cry goes up ‘there’s
a new Banksy’ then, if it is genuine, it will usually appear on this site a couple of days later although, confusingly, this does not give it authentication. Occasionally a picture of a new
piece will appear here before anyone has spotted it.
If you want to buy a Banksy print (good luck) or prints from a list of almost sixty artists who they also sell, then go to www.picturesonwalls.com, Banksy’s online
gallery. You can also visit the gallery at 46–48 Commercial Street, London E1 6LT.
Three sites that I used follow Banksy in fine detail, providing a huge amount of useful information if you have time to go through all the posts. The site I probably made
most use of is www.UrbanArtAssociation.org. This is the original Banksy Forum site set up in 2006. I also used www.thebanksyforum.com, as well as the Banksy group on flickr:
www.flickr.com/groups/banksy. The site www.banksy-prints.com gave a very helpful list of Banksy prints and the prices they were issued at, but this record unfortunately seems to have come to a halt
in the middle of 2010. However the site’s founder says it will be fully operational again in 2012.
The one blog I get sent and read every day is Vandalog, which you can find at http://blog.vandalog.com. Founded in 2008 by R.J. Rushmore, who divides his time between
London and Philadelphia where he is at university, it is a very good record of what is happening in the street art world and where; there are many things I would have missed but for Vandalog
pointing them out. I even bought a couple of T-shirts off this site at Christmas.
On the East Coast the key site is www.woostercollective.com. The founders of the site, Marc and Sara Schiller, have close links to Banksy – his New York museum
incursions, for instance, were first announced on this site. Wooster carries street art pictures from around the world but is less newsy than Vandalog. Another New York-based site,
http://thestreetspot.com/, concentrates more exclusively on the city. On the West Coast probably the site I used the most was http://melroseandfairfax.blogspot.com – again very useful,
although I certainly was not on it every day.
Other sites that I have used regularly include:
http://arrestedmotion.com/
http://www.neublack.com/
http://nuart09.blogspot.com
http://boingboing.net/
http://www.ukstreetart.co.uk/
http://streetartlondon.co.uk/
http://unurth.com/
Good pictures of all of his exhibitions, photographed exten sively by fans, can be found via Google. One of the best sites for Banksy photographs is
http://www.flickr.com/photos/romanywg/. Other flickr sites that Vandalog rates include:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nolionsinengland/ (London),
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lunapark/ (New York) and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord-jim/ (Los Angeles).
Banksy interviews
These are the interviews with Banksy that I used or consulted; it was only while compiling this list that I realised quite how often Banksy goes public,
like any other artist, when he thinks he needs to. Some articles are full interviews with him (almost all by email), others include within them some emailed quotes from him. Most are easily found
on the web and I will only give exact web references where they take a bit of hunting down. There may be one or two instances where a fake Banksy has crept in but I am sure that the great majority
of these interviews are genuine.
‘Banksy (Yes Banksy) on Thierry, EXIT Skepticism & Documentary Filmmaking as Punk, All These Wonderful Things’. A.J. Schnack,
http://edendale.typepad.com, 21 December 2010
‘Exclusive: Banksy in his own words’.
Nick Francis,
Sun
, 4 September 2010. (This is an accurate transcript of the Banksy interview included as one of the extras in
Exit Through
the Gift Shop
, so it is not exactly exclusive, but it is useful.)
Banksy’s first Australian interview. Kylie Northover,
The Age
, 29 May 2010
‘Banksy Talks Art, Power and
Exit Through the Gift Shop
’. Nancy Miller,
Wired
magazine, April 2010
‘Street (il)legal: Q&A with Banksy’. David Fear,
Time Out
, New York, 12 April 2010
‘Banksy Revealed?’ Shelley Leopold,
LA Weekly
, 8 April 2010
‘World Exclusive: Banksy’. Ossian Ward,
Time Out
, 4 March 2010
‘Banksy Woz ’Ere’. Eleanor Mills,
Sunday Times
Magazine, 28 February 2010
‘Banksy goes home to shake-up Bristol’. Waldemar Januszczak,
Sunday Times
, 14 June 2009
‘Breaking the Banksy’. Lee Coan,
Mail on Sunday
Live magazine, June 2008
‘Banksy was Here. The invisible man of graffiti art’. Lauren Collins,
The New Yorker
, 14 May 2007
‘Banksy: The Naked Truth’. Interview with Shepard Fairey,
Swindle
magazine, no. 8, Autumn 2006
‘Banksy hits the big time’. Luke Leitch,
The Times
, September 2006
‘Beware it’s Banksy’. Roger Gastman,
LA Weekly
, September 2006
‘Give me Monet, that’s what I want’. Morgan Falconer,
The Times
, 11 October 2005
‘Art Attack’. Jeff Howe,
Wired
magazine, August 2005
‘Need talent to exhibit in museums? Not this prankster’. Randy Kennedy,
New York Times
, March 2005
‘British prankster smuggles art into top NY museums’. Reuters, March 2005
‘Something to spray’. Simon Hattenstone,
Guardian
, 17 July 2003
‘Banksy, graffiti artist’, Emma Warren,
Observer
, 26 May 2002
The collection of interviews below can be found through the Urban Art Association,
the Banksy Forum or the banksy flickr group and
some are on all three sites.
‘Banksy’.
Design is Kinky
magazine, November 2002
‘Creative Vandalism’. Jim Carey,
Squall
magazine, 30 May 2002
‘Banksy and Shok1 chatting’.
Big Daddy Magazine
, issue 7, 2001
There is also a ‘transcript of an interview with Banksy by Squall back in 2001’. This may well be from the short film
Banksy, Boom or
Bust
, Squall Productions for Channel 4, August 2001.
‘Painting and Decorating’. Si Mitchell,
Level
magazine, June/July 2000
‘The Enemy Within’. Boyd Hill,
Hip-Hop Connection
, no. 136, April 2000
Radio and television
Santa’s Ghetto in Bethlehem. Paul Wood, BBC Radio 4
PM
, Christmas 2007
Interview at the time of the publication of
Wall and Piece
. Zina Saro-Wiwa,
The Culture Show
, November 2005
Interview at the time of his incursions into New York’s museums. Michele Norris, National Public Radio, March 2005
Interview before his Severnshed exhibition. Fergus Colville, BBC Radio Bristol, February 2000
Steve Lazarides
‘Urban Renewal’. Andrew Child,
Financial Times
, 28 January 2011
‘Steve Lazarides: Tunnel visions’. Alice Jones,
Independent
, 12 October 2010
‘Banksy’s Ex-Gallerist talks about their breakup, Depictions of Hell’. Susan Michals,
Vanity Fair Daily
, 11 October 2010
‘On the run with London’s bad-boy gallerist’. Michael Slenske, www.artinfo.com, 1 October 2010
‘Steve Lazarides: Graffiti’s Uber-dealer’. Luke Leitch,
The Times
, 11 July 2009
‘Keeping it real’. Alice O’Keefe,
New Statesman
, October 2008
‘The Banksy Manager’. Charlotte Eager,
ES
magazine, November 2007
‘A shop window for outsiders’. Alastair Sooke,
Daily Telegraph
, August 2007
Exit Through the Gift Shop
‘Ron English Revelations’. Jim Vorel, http://www.heraldre-view.com/blogs/decaturade/article_2217fed0-cf18-11e0-9659-001cc4c002e0.html, 25
August 2011
‘Getting at the truth of
Exit Through the Gift Shop
’. Jason Felch,
Los Angeles Times
, 22 February 2011. This was the lengthiest
and most detailed interview with Mr Brainwash that I read.
There was a 40-minute interview with the film’s producer, Jamie D’Cruz, and editor, Chris King, which I found on www.viddler.com but which is
now not easily accessible.
‘Hyping the “Gift Shop”’. Eric Kohn, www.indiewire.com, 15 November 2010
‘Banksy docu marketers let auds help out’. Caroline Ryder, www.variety.com, 19 June 2010
‘Thierry Guetta is real’. Alex Jablonski, http://sparrowsongs.wordpress.com, 22 April 2010
Shepard Fairey interviewed by WNYC radio about Mr Brainwash and Banksy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiVxOzMFX gw&feature=related, uploaded 21
April 2010
‘Banksy movie boasts strong opening numbers in non-traditional release’. Peter Knegt, www.indiewire.com, 19 April 2010. Also on the same
website by the same writer: ‘Exit strategy: Bringing Banksy to the Masses’, 7 April 2010
‘Moment of truth: Banksy is selling, but are you buying?’ S.T. Vanairsdale, www.movieline.com, 15 April 2010
‘Is Banksy’s Mr Brainwash an Art-World Borat?’ Logan Hill,
New York
magazine, 14 April 2010
‘Riddle? Yes. Enigma? Sure. Documentary?’ Melena Ryzik,
New York Times
, 13 April 2010
‘Here’s why the Banksy movie is a Banksy prank’. Alissa Walker, www.fastcompany.com, April 2010
‘
Exit Through the Gift Shop
: The enigma known as Banksy’. Steven Zeitchik,
Los Angeles Times
, 30 March 2010
‘The latest Banksy Hoax? A real artist’. Tom Shone,
The Times
, 27 February 2010
‘Brainwashed’. Andrew Russeth, www.artinfo.com, 16 February 2010
‘Shepard Fairey speaks at Bonhams and Butterfields Panel’, 5 November 2008. On YouTube. There are different segments of this discussion;
Fairey speaking about Mr Brainwash comes halfway through a video which is 10 min, 10 sec. long.
‘Mr Brainwash Bombs LA’. Shelley Leopold,
LA Weekly
, 11 June 2008
‘Featured Artist – Mr Brainwash’. www.neublack.com, June 2008. Short interview with Mr Brainwash, pictures of the show followed by a
long interesting discussion on his art.
The news of Glen Friedman’s case against Mr Brainwash was first broken on www.hollywoodreporter.com. Sean Bonner at www.boingboing.net supported
Friedman, while RJ – ‘Mr. Brainwash is getting his ass sued’ – came to the defence of Mr Brainwash at http://blog.vandalog.com. The whole question of appropriation or
‘referencing’ of images was covered at www.theartnewspaper.com in March 2011. Also: ‘Obey plagiarist Shepard Fairey’. Mark Vallen, http://www.art-for-a-change.com,
December 2007.
Derek Walborn at www.derekwalborn.com is the sculptor employed by Mr Brainwash who answered my questions about what he did and did not produce for Mr
Brainwash.
Incursions
‘A Wooster Exclusive: Banksy Hits New York’s Most Famous Museums’. www.wooster.collective.com, 23 March 2005
‘Graffiti artist cuts out middle man to get his work hanging in the Tate’. Steven Morris, www.guardian.co.uk, 18 October 2003
‘Street artist Banksy dons disguise to install his picture on gallery wall’. Arifa Akbar, www.independent.co.uk, 18 October 2003
Bristol show
‘Banksy charged Bristol Museum £1, contract papers reveal’. www.culture24.org.uk, 14 August 2009
‘Banksy vs Bristol Museum’, review. http://martinworster.wordpress.com, 2 July 2009
‘Banksy takes over the Bristol City Museum’. Waldemar Januszczak,
Sunday Times
, 21 June 2009
‘Banksy: The graffitist goes straight’. Tim Adams,
Observer
, 14 June 2009
‘Banksy comes home for Bristol show’. www.thisisbristol.co.uk, 12 June 2009
Banksy Souvenir Supplement,
Evening Post
, 2 September 2009
Bristol City Council graffiti policy can be found at: http://www.bristol.gov.uk