Last blog question for semester one- Banksy's work

How can we categorize Banksy's work -graffiti or murals?



When i found Banksy's work in goole or other websites, his work categorize as graffiti certainly.

http://weburbanist.com/2008/09/07/banksy-art-and-graffiti-the-ultimate-guide/

While he has subsequently become known for all kinds of installation art and other culture jamming projects Banksy has his roots in traditional graffiti, stencils and drawings. Much of his earliest – and now most valuable – work can be found scrawled in notebooks or on public walls around Great Britain. Extensive use of stencils in particular has helped Banksy work more quickly and maintain his anonymity.


Research Banksy's work to attempt to answer this question.
What are some of the differing opinions about Banksy's work?

He is an anti-consumer so he doesn't like advertisements in public places so he doesn't open exhibitions or own the gallery unlike other artist.
We can see a bitter satire on society in his works. I really agree his opinion.

How does his work sit in relation to consumerism? Can his work be sold?
What are some of his attitudes to the sale of Art?



He is an anti-consumer so he doesn't like advertisements in public places so he doesn't open exhibitions or own the gallery. He express his works in public areas without any interests. Then can we buy his works? Yes, we can because the reasons at the front that I mentioned that he doesn't like public advertisements so Even though he sells his work through auction, which is call ebay he doesn't sell his work by using advertisements and gallery or exhibitions. Therefore only some people who really want to buy banksy's work can get his works.

I can know this facts after i found some informations such as news on internet like this.

http://kateschildwaster.com/2009/02/21/banksy-the-anti-consumer/

“You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.” -Banksy

Banksy, who puts much effort into remaining anonymous, is the ultimate anti-consumer and king of satirical artistry. His work is ingenious. And as anonymous as he is, his art spans the public area. Even though I want to end up as that person rearranging the world to put her company in front of the consumer, I still have the utmost respect for Banksy and what he stands for. Obviously, after first learning about this pseudo-anonymous artist, I had to check out his website, and I immediately fell in love with his work and how he presents it. Yes, it’s his portfolio, but what’s more- it is his way of getting his message to the masses, even if it is painted over. He has a section of photos on his website, “What happened next” that shows the progression of a few of his paintings that public authorities altered in order to remove the negative messages they portrayed. But Banksy’s work screams the truth, and although it is often covered and quickly hidden, it definitely has an impact on those who see it.

Something that caught my interest when browsing through the artwork in the “Outdoors” section on Banksy’s site was an article he had posted that criticized one of his graffiti images. The author goes into detail about how the sniper in the picture is holding the rifle completely backwards, and insults Banksy, labeling him as less than an amateur. I found this article entirely amusing. Did the artist or the ex-servicemen fail to notice the child behind the sniper who is about to scare him by bursting a paper bag? Wouldn’t they think there was a little more to this artwork and taking it literally was the last thing they should do? Maybe the whole point of this painting is to portray that the sniper is unaware and incapable. Surely, if Banksy were to copy a picture from a photograph he would get it right. Looking at some of his crude oil works, anyone can notice his attention to detail in his detournement of paintings by famous artists such as Monet and Gainsborough. If a sniper had already allowed a young child to sneak up behind him, then it is only fitting he be absurdly “holding a rifle into his right shoulder and steadying the weapon with his right hand, while using his left hand to pull the trigger.” It is a mistake only a professional serviceman would notice, but based on Banksy’s work I want to believe it was not done in error. Then again, maybe I am giving the man too much credit. Because his graffiti is so widely publicized, it undergoes much review and interpretation that Banksy may not have originally intended. This is a man who once said, “I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said ‘that’s clever, it’s an anagram of art’ and I had to pretend I’d known that all along.” He loves art, sees things in the world he doesn’t like, and uses his art to express that. His graffiti, he claims, is painted in 35 seconds at times, so if every little detail is not perfect, I think we could let it slide. After all, how much time can a graffiti artist spend on little insignificant details when he’s constantly worried about staying under the radar?

Added to my wish list of books: Banging your head against a brick wall by Banksy

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-508290/Wall-painted-Banksy-sells-200-000--new-owner-fork-brick-canvas.html

"Wall painted by Banksy sells for £200,000 - but the new owner must also fork out to move the brick canvas"

An online bidder has paid £200,000 for a wall painted by graffiti artist Banksy.
The stencilled design of a classically-dressed painter putting the finishing touches to the real artist's scrawled name attracted 69 bids on eBay, finally achieving a top bid of £208,100.
But the successful bidder also faces the challenge - and the cost - of removing the brick canvas from its west London home.
The work appeared outside a post-production company run by Luti Fagbenle on Portobello Road last September.
After deciding to auction the wall, the potential seller protected the investment against vandals with a plastic sheet.
A spokesman for Banksy said the work was authentic but added that the artist would not comment on the sale.
Works by Banksy, who is originally from Bristol, have grown in popularity in recent years.
Fans and buyers include Christina Aguilera, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. He recently extended his canvases of choice - Bristol and east London - to include the illegal security wall in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Last year, one of his paintings, Space Girl And Bird, fetched £288,000 at auction.
Bobby Read, art expert at specialist insurer Hiscox, said: "Banksy is a maverick as well as a hugely talented artist. It's an intoxicating combination for buyers as this price shows.
"The Portobello Road wall is a special piece and probably the largest piece of Banksy art work to have been sold at a public auction.
"This sale poses many interesting questions for the art world. How do you move a piece of work like this, how do you display it and how do you insure it?"

Who is Banksy? Do we know his true identity?



Banksy is a pseudonymous British graffiti artist. He is believed to be a native of Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol and to have been born in 1974,but his identity is unknown.According to Tristan Manco,[who?] Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s." His artworks are often satirical pieces of art on topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His street art, which combines graffiti writing with a distinctive stencilling technique, is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass who maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His art has appeared in cities around the world. Banksy's work was born out of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.

Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti.Art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell his street art on location and leave the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder.

Banksy's first film, Exit Through The Gift Shop, billed as "the world's first street art disaster movie", made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.The film was released in the UK on March 5.

The 10-year quest to discover the true identity of the underground artist known as Banksy has become almost as captivating as his stylised graffiti which has popped up unannounced on buildings across the world.

While many have claimed to know who he is, the only reliable facts are that he hails from Bristol and his first name is Robin. Now the mystery surrounding the identity of Banksy may have been solved by a newspaper which has published a picture of a man whose antecedence is more public school than street artist.

The Mail On Sunday says it traced the artist using a photograph purporting to show Banksy at work with spray cans in Jamaica in 2004. Former friends and acquaintances identify the man in the picture as Robin Gunningham, a former pupil of the £9,420-a-year Bristol Cathedral School.

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Search the news archive for more stories
Since his emergence as a leading street artist, Banksy's work attracts six-figure price tags. In January a piece of his edgy graffiti in Portobello Road, west London – which shows a painter finishing off the word "Banksy" – received a bid of £208,100 in an online auction.

Yesterday the artist's agents refused to confirm the newspaper's claim that he was Mr Gunningham, 34, despite what the paper said was compelling evidence to support its assertion. "We get these calls all the time," said his spokeswoman. "I'll say what I always say: I never confirm or deny these stories."

The subversive political messages Banksy conveys through his stencils and sculptures can be found on streets, walls and buildings across the world, from London to New York.

Last year, he left a life-size replica of a Guantanamo Bay detainee at the California theme park Disneyland. And in 2005, he decorated Israel's West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side.

He has become one of art's hottest properties, with Angelina Jolie and Christina Aguilera among those said to have splashed out on his work.

One of the first conventional exhibitions of his art was held in a warehouse in 2000, but Banksy gave out only the street number for the building and not the street. As mainstream interest began to grow, he concocted elaborate deceptions to shroud his identity, usually conducting interviews via telephone and using trusted associates to handle sales.

With the increased publicity, however, came greater danger of being caught spray painting on public sites, and so Banksy began to undertake more elaborate, one-off stunts. He got into the penguin exhibit at the London Zoo and stencilled "We're bored of fish" on the wall; in October 2003 he hung one of his own paintings on the wall of the Tate. It depicted a bucolic country scene bounded by police tape and the identification tag below it read: "Banksy 1975. Crimewatch UK Has Ruined The Countryside For All Of Us. 2003. Oil On Canvas." He pulled a similar stunt in 2005 at four major museums in New York City, including the Museum of Modern Art, which decided to add the piece to its permanent collection.

When he gives interviews, Banksy insists the public should never discover who he is. "I have no interest in ever coming out," he told Swindle magazine. "I'm just trying to make the pictures look good; I'm not into trying to make myself look good. And besides, it's a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/has-banksys-real-identity-been-discovered-at-last-866867.html





We can see a bitter satire on society in his works.