It is with trepidation that one might enter the show, The Art of Banksy: Without Limits.
With… hesitation? Suspicion? Apprehension? What does “without limits” even mean? Is this a legit Banksy show, with some 30 out of more than 100 works on display reported to be originals? Originals owned by a mysterious Romanian woman who apparently has something to do with this exhibition.
Everybody including me knows who Banksy is. And nobody knows. How did he pull off that identity trick?
A great mystery. There was that guy who famously, in Wired magazine, tried to disappear off the surface of the planet and then challenged the entire Internet to find him within 30 days – a $5,000 prize. Oh, and spoiler alert: they found him.
https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff-vanish2
You enter The Art of Banksy, the London Ontario version, almost through the gift shop. You’re greeted by “security” entrance people at the doors, and pass through a cardboard version of airport-style clearance, with a sign that warns of such things as black cats, martinis, grenades, etc. that are not allowed inside.
The security personnel pass a cardboard “electronic” wand before I pass through. My whiskey flask goes undetected. Whew!
I ask the security if Banksy might be here today. Ha. As if, even if he/she/they were, how would we know?
We know that Banksy is perhaps the most celebrated (in certain circles) artist of the 21st Century, and the fact that no one knows who he/she/they is… is part of the fun.
Most of us are familiar with his iconoclasm, as in when he/she famously destroyed their own work at a Sotheby’s auction. You know the one, the girl releasing her red heart-shaped balloon, as in some iterations, to the wind.
Winner of that auction, which put the price of Balloon Girl at many millions of dollars before it was magically shredded once the auctioneer’s hammer struck, may have been in on that escapade. We don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. Point was made.
Or we have seen Banksy’s Exit Through The Gift Shop, which succeeds Times magazine art critic Robert Hughes’ argument in several books before that film, that the contemporary art world is a disgrace, all about hype and selling a commodity. As if artworks are like… gold, or a Wall Street investment vehicle. To which the more recent documentary film The Price of Everything nicely bookends.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Price_of_Everything
There’s too much to see at this show, but perhaps the best place to start at this sanctioned or not exhibition of Banksy’s street art, sculptures, installations and film is in a very dark cubby hole on the right of the entrance… once you clear the fake security borrowed from Banksy’s Dismaland theme park. We get a hologram-like projection in a sort of black hole wherein the artist’s statement of sorts. Supposedly taken from the artist’s voice recordings.
“Most artists must have an obsession,” says Banksy, “Something that defines their work. Monet had light. Hockney had colour. Well, for me, it’s the police response time.
One should be audacious and funny. But also political. A commentary about the world. Most of my work is temporary. In no longer exists.
People always ask, why did you do it? But that’s not the real question. The question to me was always, ‘why would you not do it if you can?’ I mean, the work is out there, you wanna leave your mark, one spray can, one night, and all of a sudden, people notice…
I was never good at being a typical New York street artist. Graffiti has always been a temporary art form. You make your mark, and then they scrub it off. I wasn’t designed for the history books, and I never liked galleries to start with.
Maybe… maybe all art is just about… living a little bit longer. I know I only have a few minutes until they get there.
Most of my work is temporary. It only exists until they get there.”
Fun fact: as I write this, my black cat Nigel walks across my keyboard and types IKEE. True story, and so no wonder there’s that ‘no black cats’ warning sign at the entrance, except I think Banksy might approve of this feline editorial, cat-itorial? IKEA, he obviously meant, off by one letter. Nigel doesn’t know how to spell.
Back to my apprehension. Is this really even Banksy’s work? The problem of authenticity doesn’t just apply to this show. On sabbatical in Bristol, a professor tells me, “There were Banksy’s you could see all around the artist’s hometown, but also fake Banksy’s. How to tell the difference?”
You can read a review of this show in a Chicago iteration:
Or here, in a previous Toronto show:
Those journalists raise all the questions. And, is it not hypocritical to be charging to see work that an anonymous street artist purposefully put on the streets and not in galleries, for the people, the rats and monkeys as he likes to portray?
Reading those reviews, you might want to stay away from this show. The Chicago writer says you’re better off just buying the Banksy coffee table book.
However…
“Isn’t Banksy in the great tradition of Western Art?” asks artist/cartoonist Charles Jaffe. “His radical posturing is also very traditional in a modernist way.”
Right, take the Barnes collection. Nobody has a problem shelling out a lot of money to see that famous group of collected works. Take Raphael. His work, originally installed as altarpieces with exquisite carved wood framing and light sources carefully chosen from the upper left clerestory, was removed and installed at the Louvre.
“He makes a mockery of surveillance,” says Jaffe. “It’s tangible but it’s not, it’s fake. But it puts people on edge. Galleries have security so you don’t come in with a spray can or knife and deface prominent work, but Banksy doesn’t care. Hence the fake security. Although he does that metaphorically, the Queen as in the David Bowie album cover. He fucks with Warhol. He destroys his own work with the shredding. It is punk aesthetic at play.”
“If graffiti could change the world, it would be illegal,” is one Banksy inscription. Indeed: he offers plenty of critique and mockery of surveillance in its many forms we all confront in contemporary society. In the installation that presents a life-sized nasty rodent-infested bathroom, Banksy’s punk aesthetic is at play, as if to say, we use bathrooms everyday. And we live in our own shit.
That monkeys, rats, little girls releasing red helium balloons of love are ubiquitous in his work is to be expected. But there’s too much else to see here that you may not have seen before. As with Di Faced-Tenner. Though it is fake currency with Princess Di’s face instead of the Queen’s, it makes a mockery of money itself. She was more a populist “queen” of the people than Elizabeth at the time, for some/most of the British subjects. There are the Warhol appropriations, like Banksy’s Teslo soup cans. or better, Andy’s eponymous take on Marilyn Monroe’s visage: here Banksy replaces her iconography with “rebel” model Kate Moss, Touche. Too easy? I barely remember Kate Moss’ fifteen minutes of fame.
“It conforms to the marketing of Broadway road shows,” adds Jaffe. “So, it’s an interesting issue, Banksy’s personal involvement, or lack of it and how the whole concept (apparently) contradicts his aesthetic. Yet the whole event has a Banksy-sh quality to it. Discussing and writing about such things perhaps makes one a participant in the show’s possible real subject, or not-show if one doesn’t go. There’s no escape!
Reading up on the show’s presenter does not clarify any distinction between the show and Banksy personally. What we do know is that the show’s presenter, Starvox Entertainment also has shown in Las Vegas.
Is this a Vegas-like show but with a Banksy-ish twist? A Banksy comment on big, commercial exhibitions… like this one?
It’s a possibility anyway,” says Jaffe.
Is this show worth seeing? Depends on whom you talk to. “Most of them are like one-liners. Easy jokes,” says artist Nida Home Doherty.
But, scratch below the surface, and there’s much more to every image, a running socio-political commentary, Banksy commenting or critiquing world events of the last three decades. You have to know the situation in which he drops his images in a public domain with the relevant backstories. Viewers need to spend time to read the wall text for most of these pieces to get the context and situation, what’s going on the ground for most of this urban street art, in various cities around the globe. Give yourself at least two hours to do so.
“He’s a little unhinged,” one gallery viewer, a corporate type says. Noted. As any good artist comes off I suppose. Beethoven, Van Gogh, Tom Waits, Dali? The corporate type then adds, “But in a good way.”
London artist Michael Sinkins says of Twin Towers that “it’s a remembrance of the people that were lost, but also…growth from that experience. Though there’s tragedy, there is also hope.”
Riot Helmet, a piece made by the artist for his pop-up store echoes that, in a way, with it’s transformation into a disco mirror ball. I learn that this work got into a riot of sorts here when a gallery viewer accidently knocked it off its pedestal. But it got patched up and went back on display.
I witnessed senior citizens and kids alike exiting through that gift shop with not just a smile on their face, but a look of, ‘hey, I’ve just been informed… thought provoked’. Some empirical evidence: There’s a graffiti wall inviting visitors to scrawl their own statements. It’s mostly heart-warming and inspiring.
Including what James Kirkpatrick posted on that wall. As he is a London artist that knows a thing or two about street art – he’s acclaimed for work he’s done on five continents, and is one person with a different perspective on The Art of Banksy show.
“I received aggressive messages from Instagrammers who were upset that I posted positively about my close friends who are silently involved in the presentation of the show … these virtuous messengers, who know nothing about what’s going on behind the scenes, stated with certainty that actual crimes were being committed against Banksy by the show even existing. And, galleries that had previously tampered with my career were calling me to politely ask if I could introduce them to Banksy… maybe get a piece for their next group show,” he says. “You can argue that vandalism (graffiti) is horrible, disrupting private property … and/or you can assert that this show is mostly bad recreations of street work printed on canvas and that the real Banksy work belongs to the people and in the streets.”
Kirkpatrick muses, “People are supposed to argue about it over beers with a pal i.e. ‘I heard it was just a guy who knows him that painted the walls in there and it wasn’t really even him’. I heard he was too busy working on a new album with Massive Attack – I heard Banksy was actually in London Ontario, and he loved eating a burek every day in the market, he was disguised as a homeless guy.’ You are supposed to hold your nose up in the air about it. Is Banksy a modern day Robin Hood or is it some collector from Romania or whatever making a buck off of his hype? You think you know the answer? You fell for it.
It lends the same energy as the late rapper MF Doom sending imposters in his place to play shows, some guy hiding behind the mask on stage lip synching over mp3’s… don’t worry. Doom got paid for the show and it’s part of his plan and yes you are still going to buy the T-shirt,” says Kirkpatrick.
He’s not finished. “What I do know is that we have people who don’t normally go to galleries are coming to the show… there are kids walking through the show… scrolling on walls in the space and many of them will be inspired by the event to engage in creative moments after this,” he says. “We have a show that is bringing people with money to the core of our city and some may be interested in learning more about the art scene here… or maybe they will think about donating money to help the five homeless people they stepped over on their way to get to the show. The point is that.. even if you hate the show or maybe if you feel inspired…. there are good people from London who are being paid decently to put this on. All the things ‘experts on the issue’ can complain about have already been covered. What I know is that someone is trying to get something entertaining going in the city. Or instead, let’s find a reason to get really upset about it,” says Kirkpatrick.
Amen to that.
Artist/filmmaker/musician Laurie Anderson was in Canada last May addressing the NSCAD graduating artists. She noted that a lot of young artists seem pressured to have a plan about what their career trajectory should look like, unlike her experience growing up in the vibrant NYC scene of the 70s and 80s. Anderson recommended that, while it is more difficult and expensive to live these days, the way of the artist should perhaps be more open to just seeing what happens, what evolves, and follow that sort of experimental or gut response to what the world throws at you, and how your art might follow in the right direction. It’s hard not to think that is good advice. It’s also apparently just how Banksy’s career trajectory, if there is just one trajectory, took place.
Alas, I exit through the gift shop. Is it ironic that I purchase the show catalogue on the way out? I’m told by one of the minions, rats, manning the checkout that Banksy gets a cut of the book sales, if you can believe that. As he/she should. An artist has to eat, pay rent, too. No worries. And a charity gets a cut of t-shirt sales. Does this happen at AGO blockbuster shows of Van Gogh, Picasso?
Rat at the counter also says that Banksy insisted on the QR code posted on the wall here linking his Ukraine work — just one of the subjects of injustice in Banksy’s work — to sites where you can get active, involved, support, to make the world a better place.
Righteous critics and some street artists might not give a rat’s ass about this show.
But those exiting through the gift shop all seem to be giving it two rats’ thumbs up.
Vincent Cherniak writes somewhere in London, Ontario (with Banksy’s real identity scrawled on a piece of paper, if you can pry it away from his cat Nigel’s claws.)
Good article! The mix of history, opinions, and museum atmosphere made me feel like I was there. It also raises a good question about authenticity.