It's also worth watching the film "Exit through the giftshop" on Netflix. Goes over Banksy in decent depth, as well as some other famous street artists.
That was such a fascinating movie. Hopefully not spoiling much of it, but the way the subject of the documentary seesaws from Banksy to "the director" and back was really interesting.
I'm not sure what to believe by the end of that documentary, but it sure was a wild ride.
His work is awesome, but I'd argue the fact he can sell a red phone box chopped in half for $605,000 makes him part of the art establishment, not against it.
“There’s a whole new audience out there, and it’s never been easier to sell [one’s art],” Banksy has maintained. “You don’t have to go to college, drag ’round a portfolio, mail off transparencies to snooty galleries or sleep with someone powerful, all you need now is a few ideas and a broadband connection. This is the first time the essentially bourgeois world of art has belonged to the people. We need to make it count.”
I think this is the key takeaway—that it's easier than ever to get exposure, and that you can get acceptance and even commercial success without playing by the traditional rules.
The irony, he added, that his anti-establishment art commands huge prices isn’t lost on him. “I love the way capitalism finds a place—even for its enemies. It’s definitely boom time in the discontent industry. I mean how many cakes does Michael Moore get through?”
But, he didn't ask for that; he just put it out there and let the art world have at it. The fact that most of his preferred canvas is illegal (and by that nature, ephemeral) makes him firmly anti-establishment.
A lot of people live and work in the "system," if you will, but are still vehemently against it.
I work for the Man, and wish I didn't, ideologically. But I have health care, solid vacation allotment and decent coworkers, so I'll bide time until something way better and cooler comes my way.
Sensible question. Here is an attempt at a bit of an answer.
In the UK, the 'public' schools are actually private and the more famous ones charge a lot of money. They are also registered charities which annoys some other people trying to run real charities (the ones that help poor people), but that means there are a few places made available on a scholarship basis at little or no cost.
A good public school has small classes (8 to 12), individual attention, and focuses on the development of what they call 'character' in the pupils. The result is an education that provides considerable self-confidence (sometimes misplaced by the way) and self-reliance.
When you think about it, an ideal education for an individualist social critic. Whose career can then be presented as 'eccentric' and thus the threat immunised.
> Whose career can then be presented as 'eccentric' and thus the threat immunised.
This is the part I don't understand. Who is immunizing? His critics? Or his work is immunized by having gone to public school?
Seems to me that what he chose to do as an adult should not be discounted because of where he went to school as a child. From the article, and what else I know of Banksy, it sounds like he is a very self-made person. As you pointed out, it also sounds like his early education gave him the skills to see the absurdity and hypocrisy in the world and address it creatively. Why is that a bad thing?
I am spinning a speculative argument here. I'm not defending this seriously, but just constructing a possible answer to the question posed in the parent post by jhull.
I'm suggesting that people who have an English public school type education are less likely to engage in organised political action that is oppositional to the current arrangements than those who have not had that education. The immunisation comes from the presentation of Banksy as a lone and mysterious eccentric by publications such as the Smithsonian Magazine. That would be harder if there was an organised Banksy posse with a programme who ran summer schools &c
Attending a private school - which is often more of a parental than the pupil's decision - doesn't make him an hypocrite. In fact, it's often the direct experience that makes an activist rebel against the system.
That said, even if he is, so what? The work is independent from the artist.
