Episode 16: Banksy

Rozhovor s Britkou Verity Babbs, která je vystudovaná historička z umění z oxfordské univerzity, ve svých publikacích se soustředí na současnou londýnskou uměleckou scénu a píše i pro prestižní deník The Guardian. Povypráví nám o Banksym, nejznámějším street artovém umělci současnosti, jehož identita zůstává i nadále tajemstvím. Kdo je tento enfant terrible, génius, jehož díla satiricky "komentují" dnešní svět a mají hodnotu statisíců dolarů?

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:02

Welcome to the English-speaking podcast on this hill. My name is Pavlina and every week I will talk to my parents about the different interesting topics of the whole English-speaking world. And that's all from me. Thank you very much for watching this video. We can start. If you like this podcast and would like to support it, you can use Patreon at patreoncom.

Speaker 2 0:37

Hi everybody and welcome to today's episode. It's a great privilege and honour for me to welcome my guest, verity Babs. Hi, verity, how's it going?

Speaker 3 0:47

Hi Pavlina, thanks so much for having me on.

Speaker 2 0:50

No, thank you. You're all the way in London right now, aren't you?

Speaker 3 0:54

Yeah, down in Peckham it's typically grey and raining right now.

Speaker 2 0:59

Oh is it.

Speaker 3 1:00

But otherwise a great city.

Speaker 2 1:03

Firstly, thank you so much for joining me today and, if I can briefly introduce you if that's fine For sure so you are an art consultant and art writer and you're also a history of art graduate from the University of Oxford and in your work you focus mainly on London contemporary art scene right.

Speaker 3 1:23

Oh yeah, exactly. So, yeah, writing about London's art scene and I talked with some comedians. I used to be a comedian when I was at university and I interview some comedians on YouTube now and ask them about art as well. So it's nice to be in the guest chair rather than the host chair tonight.

Speaker 2 1:44

And so well, today we're going to be talking about one very special and unique individual of the British art scene, and that is Banksy. So could you tell us what do we know about him? Banksy, the world's most famous, unknown street artist.

Speaker 3 2:00

Yeah, exactly. So Banksy's whole thing is being anonymous and we don't know who he is. What we do know is that he was growing up and living in Bristol in the 90s in Bristol as a city in the south of England. We know that he was involved in the football scene there. We know he was involved in the music scene. We also know that he was expelled from school and was involved in petty crime and things like this. But we basically only have these very vague details of what kind of life he was living. But it sounds like a very typical young man kind of lifestyle involved in football, involved in music and getting up to a bit of trouble.

Speaker 2 2:43

basically, and so why do you think that we're so obsessed with knowing who he is? Does it even matter?

Speaker 3 2:50

So it's interesting that various names or kind of guesses that people have had over the years as to who Banksy is and it's almost like we're actually obsessed with him staying anonymous. I don't think people actually want to know who Banksy is. I think that if it was revealed who Banksy is, I think a lot of people would still deny it as true. I think that a lot of people we couldn't get our heads around it because he's so accepted as someone who is anonymous and there have been plenty of names given that could plausibly be him. Last summer in England there was a big conspiracy that Banksy was Neil Buchanan, who was a children's television presenter. He presented a show called Art Attack, which was a brilliant TV show that lots of us grew up on in the early noughties and that was a really good, fun conspiracy theory that he was Banksy. But I think that we almost don't want to know. But I suppose that the art world and art history is completely obsessed with artists and artists who have names, an artist that you can pinpoint who they are, what they were doing when. And there's something exciting about Banksy, not only because he does art that isn't traditional, because he's doing art outside, he's using spray paint. He's doing these kind of pranks and he sort of represents for a lot of people a very accessible, very non-traditional face of the art world. And because he's anonymous, that is another way in which he has questioned how the art system works, because we love to say you know, this was by Rembrandt in the year whatever, this was by Holbein in the year whatever. But there's something quite nice about nice and refreshing about Banksy.

Speaker 2 4:41

And what is so special about him? You know, every time he creates something, it makes the whole world just like stop and stare. So what do you think? Where's the magic coming?

Speaker 3 4:50

from. I think it's interesting and I think that Banksy has had his career at a very interesting time as well, because he starts to become famous in the naughties when people have just started to, you know, use camera phones, people are videoing things, the internet starts to be popular. People are able to document his work in a way that you wouldn't have been able to do 20 years before, and now, obviously, with things like Instagram, as soon as there's a new Banksy and someone sees it, it's all over Instagram, it's everywhere on Twitter. Everyone wants to know about it and I think it's because he has managed to remain exciting, which is odd for most artists, because most artists have five or 10 years when they have an exhibition or they have a retrospective which we all are excited about and go to. But the fact that Banksy's work is here and now and it might be gone tomorrow because someone might paint over it or the council might remove it, there is a sense of urgency about his work.

Speaker 3 5:58

In 2015, he did a big sort of exhibition sort of installation called Dismaland so play on the word Disneyland.

Speaker 3 6:08

I think he was sued hugely for it by Disney, but he basically took an old Lido, which is a kind of outdoor swimming pool at the seaside that had been disused and it had been abandoned and he turned it into this falling apart horrible Disneyland castle that had art inside but also had lots of his sculptures, and that was only there for a couple of weeks. So I think it is this ephemeral nature of what Banksy does. There's no protecting it. There's something quite magic about that and I think that's why people get so cross when Banksy's are peeled off the wall or sold in an auction, because that's why people say Banksy's a massive sellout is because the whole nature of what makes Banksy powerful is that very special thing that is. This might not be here tomorrow, but I saw it, or I've seen it before it was taken away, or I was one of the first people to see it, or I think I maybe spotted Banksy doing it or whatever. And that's why people get cross, I think, a lot of the time with Banksy now that he's more established.

Speaker 2 7:21

Well, and now that you mentioned his artworks being sold, you know there's this example that he had a building shredder in the frame of one of his artworks and this artwork had just been sold at an auction for $1.4 million, and then the artwork shred itself. So he's probably one of the world's biggest pranksters, and you know humor and satire play a huge part in what he does. So is there maybe any other stunt that you find particularly notable?

Speaker 3 7:49

So he's done, like you say, loads of these stunts of different levels of extremity. So some of them are just these little jokes within his work. So you see where he maybe changes. He often changes characters, so Mickey Mouse is suddenly a police officer or things like that. But he's done these largest scale pranks.

Speaker 3 8:11

In 2006, he got into a little trouble because in an exhibition in California he painted an elephant bright pink and painted a wallpaper pattern over this elephant that then was in a corner of the exhibition like a living elephant. That officials have obviously said this is animal abuse, you can't do that. But that was one of his biggest, I suppose. He also again went to Disneyland, I think in Florida, and he brought with him a blow up doll of someone in Guantanamo Bay uniform and put this prisoner in the middle of the park, which obviously scared lots of people and things like that. It's interesting with Banksy that we're quite lucky how well documented his career has been. So you can see so many of these pranks unfurling on a video called Exit Through the Gift Shop, for which he won a BAFTA for it or an Oscar for it or something.

Speaker 2 9:16

I think he was nominated for the Best Documentary for the Academy Award.

Speaker 3 9:21

Yeah, exactly so. He won this big award for this film and you can see all these different pranks he gets up to. He released a whole load of forged money that didn't have the Queen's face on it, as it normally does in England. It had Princess Diana's face on it and he released this out into the public the kind of stuff that Banksy gets away with. If we knew who he was, he would be in jail. But I think that even if we found out who Banksy was now, I don't think they'd put him in jail for the money laundering. I think that he's too valuable to society. I don't think they'd put him in jail.

Speaker 2 9:55

no, and you also mentioned Instagram. So he describes himself as an overrated graffiti artist on his Instagram page. So do you think he's?

Speaker 3 10:06

overrated. So this is interesting. A lot of people who hate Banksy think he's overrated. I don't. I think Banksy's the best and I've had many arguments with people over this and a lot of people think that maybe the reason why he's overrated is that they think that his ideas aren't very complicated. So he did this painting where all of the members of parliament in the British parliament were monkeys, or what if it turns out that the little girl is actually friends with a police officer or these kinds of things. A lot of people view those as very, very basic sort of them. Banksy trying really hard to be edgy.

Speaker 3 10:48

And yet he's so praised as a genius and a lot of people don't think these ideas are genius. I think Banksy's brilliant and I think that he represents for a lot of people a new way for the art world to function and for a lot of people. I know a lot of people, especially young men, who might say I don't really like art because they wouldn't feel comfortable going to an art gallery. But they can get why Banksy's designs are really cool. So I think that for a lot of people he is a sort of way in my husband.

Speaker 3 11:23

Exactly it's way in to appreciating art, because you can get behind this design and why it's funny or why it's political. And for that reason I think for the impact he can have on the way we view art, especially for the way that people who don't traditionally like art, I think for that impact I don't think he can be highly rated enough.

Speaker 2 11:46

Yeah, I agree. And which one of his art pieces is your favourite, and why?

Speaker 3 11:53

So one of his paintings that sold last year, called Show Me the Monet Monet spelt like the artist Monet is this brilliant painting of.

Speaker 3 12:06

It's a reproduction of one of Monet's pictures of his Lily pond, and from the pond are emerging a traffic cone and two shopping trolleys. And I think this is just a really funny, very beautiful piece, but I think it's very witty and it's very relatable. So anyone who I'm sure this is probably like a worldwide thing, but anyone who has grown up in the UK, if you see a pond or a river or a canal, they almost always will have an abandoned shopping trolley floating up from them. And I think this is not one of his most complex ideas but one of the most beautifully executed ideas. And, yeah, it makes me really happy because it's also another one of his pieces that looks at the art world and art hierarchies and Monet is meant to be this completely god of art.

Speaker 3 13:06

And he makes fun of not only of Monet, essentially, but he makes fun of the kind of people who think that Monet is beyond reproach. He had a sale at Christie's that he titled I can't believe you morons actually buy this shit. So he you know Banksy knows that the kind of people who collect his work for millions of pounds. He doesn't like them. He thinks they're doing a bad thing to society. But he thinks that just to buy art to store it in your basement somewhere until it goes up in value is an immoral thing to do.

Speaker 3 13:49

And, yeah, I like the fact that Banksy is so deeply in the art world now. Everyone loves Banksy, everyone wants to own a Banksy, all galleries want to want to have a Banksy in their collection and so he's managed to become a very key you know, a key figure in the UK art scene and the global art scene. And yet he sees right through it. He won't hold back when criticising it. He understands that. You know the prices that his works go for are a bit of a joke. He sees it all with with a lot of humour and quite a lot of what's the word? Sort of scepticism, and I think that's really, really brilliant.

Speaker 2 14:31

Yeah, definitely, and actually, now that you say it, I you probably know this, but I read that just a few days ago they they sold one of his prints that was bought by some guy in Australia, for it was the original price was $300, I think, and now they sold it for like $200,000.

Speaker 3 14:52

Yeah, exactly, he's kind of. He's an art collector's dream is the everyone. Everyone wants to have a story where they bought a piece of artwork For a couple of hundred pounds and then in 10 years time that person becomes mega famous and they suddenly can get millions and millions of pounds from it. That's everyone's dream.

Speaker 3 15:13

Banksy has a website called pest control which people use to get a certificate of authenticity for Banksy work. But the site can also decline to provide authenticity and it will always decline authenticity if a work has been pulled off a wall. So a man went on a program in the UK called I think it was Antiques Roadshow and he brought with him a Banksy that he'd pulled off the wall. But because this website, pest control, had said you know, no, this isn't a Banksy even though it was, it meant that this this guy was sort of laughed out a lot and said you know that the presenter said this is not really worth anything because you haven't got authenticity. So so Banksy is is not afraid to punish people who who take his work away from the public, where it's meant to be, and put it into private collections.

Speaker 2 16:14

And how would you do this like how would you pull it? Pull it off.

Speaker 3 16:18

Yeah, so this guy had kind of chipped it off like chipped some bricks away, I think.

Speaker 2 16:23

Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 16:24

So so people do knock through walls and take off a layer of plaster in order to get this, this Banksy work, and Banksy will say, no, not mine anymore, because you've removed it, and then suddenly, suddenly worth a hell of a lot less.

Speaker 2 16:42

Wow, and so do you think, should art talk about politics? Because some of his stuff is political in, in, in, some aspect.

Speaker 3 16:53

Yeah, I think you know, I think most of you know pretty much all of his stuff is political and I think that art, far more often than we think it is, is political and that's something you learn when you look at art history, so you can look at it from a very academic standpoint.

Speaker 3 17:09

But any artist who is expressing themselves and their reality, even if they're not intending to change anything, I view that as quite a political act, that kind of self actualization, and especially things like people like graffiti artists.

Speaker 3 17:25

I think there's something inherently political about going out into your environment and changing it and coloring it in and drawing on it.

Speaker 3 17:35

That's I view that as quite a political statement of taking control of your surroundings. And and that was true back in the beginning of street art in the 1980s in New York of teens spray painting trains on the subway that is a political act of, you know, these teenagers creating something and putting it out into the world or marking the world around them that maybe didn't care about them very much, that this, this environment, that wasn't looking out out for them. They've done a very political act in changing their surroundings for themselves and I think, yeah, art should talk about politics. I think that all art should make you think or feel something, and feelings then turn into thoughts and and I think art is very, very powerful and the way we consume art and what we consume is very, very powerful and can completely change our world view. So I think it's a really good thing that there are artists like Banksy, who are a bit more explicitly political than others.

Speaker 2 18:43

Mm, hmm, yeah, well, these are some beautiful words, I have to say. And well, yeah, very. He said this was my last question. Thank you so much. I feel like I could be sitting here until midnight listening to your voice.

Speaker 3 18:59

Sorry about that.

Speaker 2 19:01

Thank you so much for for being my guest, but I feel like wasn't enough. I would like three more hours of this podcast.

Speaker 3 19:08

Yeah, I love talking about art and I also love the sound of my own voice, so I would talk for hours, I'm sure, but thank you so much for having me having me come on your podcast.

Speaker 2 19:19

Absolutely well. Thank you again, and thank you to everyone who has listened to this episode and and bye.