Banksy is for me the most important and influential artist of the 21st century. And we don’t know who he is, except that he’s a white man born in the 70s in Bristol, and I don’t care. Let’s talk about his work and his figure, so contemporary. Experts speak of him in a disparaging manner, as if he were just a graffiti artist. Now they have had to reluctantly accept their value when they see that the sacred market has blessed their works by paying millions at auction, being the artist who has increased his price by 104 percent per year. But it is difficult for them to crown the best someone outside their distribution channels and who dirties the walls of neighborhoods or who uses understandable language in favor of political and social causes.
At the outset, I would like to clarify that Banksy does not do graffiti but urban art (Street art)The graffiti artist only seeks to write his name, a label or an icon; it is vandalistic, selfish, it says nothing other than “here I am”. While urban art takes advantage of these walls to transmit an idea or decorate the space itself, that is, it interacts with the surface and with the people who observe it. It is very different.
Painted in a corner, it is one of his best works. On one side we see a child, excited about the snow that will allow him to play with his sled, sticking out his tongue to catch the flakes; but on the other wall we see that these are ashes from a burning container. Piece found in Port Talbot, the most polluted town in the United Kingdom.
Banksy uses walls as a support and medium to spread his social activismhis denunciation of the abuses of the powerful and his criticism of the art trade. Use the wall because, he says, “it’s the hardest thing you can hit the head with.”
His painting began clandestinely because in the UK and other countries painting walls is a crime. So it was necessary to hide one’s personality, to act at night and quickly if one did not want to be caught. This is how the resource of using a pseudonym and using cut-out models (stencil) was born, which became his personal style so recognizable… and imitated.
In addition to street paintings, Banksy has created canvas paintings that have been featured in more than a dozen major exhibitions. An “Involution of Parliament,” populated by 150 chimpanzees, fetched $12 million at auction in 2009.
Banksy has left his work on five continents; He has participated in 40 exhibitions and written and illustrated 7 books; He made a film that was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary; He has clandestinely hung his works in museums such as the Louvre, the Tate and the Moma; She intervened in the wall of the West Bank and in the refugee camps of Calais and Mali. Now, cities are happy that Banksy chooses them to abandon his work: it has become a tourist attraction.
At the end of 2020, Banksy bought a yacht that he donated to an NGO. “Rich people buy yachts to sail in the Mediterranean, I buy them to save people.”
Banksy is an artist who masters symbolic and conceptual language as well as communication on social networks. His political and anti-system activity, his direct messages have generated a popularity that has ended up also interesting collectors and that all contemporary museums want to authenticate Banksy’s works. At auction, a dozen of his works have fetched more than £10 million. Every new appearance of a Banksy makes headlines. Popularity, transgression, recognition, sales… no other artist of this century equals these marks: neither the provocateur Damien Hirst nor the profiteer Jeff Koons. Banksy is undoubtedly number one.
