Last week marked thirty years since Johnny Rotten sang God Save the Queen. Now Johnny is in real estate and really quite likes Her Maj.
Apart from the music, punk made its own political and fashion statements. If you were old enough to rip your T-shirt and scrawl bollocks across it, congratulations – at least you bothered to make a statement.
In 1977, the UK’s most well known exponent of street art, Banksy, would have been a tender three-year-old.
We know little about him, apart from a crude guess at his age.
But now Christina and Brangelina are buying Banksy and the chain gang of commerce is laying claim to street art, the ordinary man’s protest song.
Graffiti has a long history – from the walls of Pompeii to the swastika, ‘Troops Out’ and insults like ‘slag’ scrawled on a lavatory wall. According to Wikipedia, graffiti becomes street art when it is “an effective tool of social emancipation”. It is not always pretty, is frequently political and – human nature being what it is – can be offensive, divisive and not even speld propally.
The effect is instant and visible and that is what makes it so edgy: it is a tool for good or evil, a cri de coeur or a call to arms. It is a bold gesture made in secret – a stab in the dark at authority, or a satirical take on everyday life. But if satire has always been a clever way of sticking up two fingers without buggering up the chance of that OBE – graffiti goes for a more direct hit.
In the 1960s, graffiti said f**k the establishment, ban the bomb, free love – in the enforced economies of the1970s, just plain old bollocks. It morphed into street art in the Belfast murals of the Troubles and lingers in faded rants about the Poll Tax.
Graffiti – including street art – is, however, still illegal in most countries. In the UK, artists may face a charge of criminal damage and a £2,500 fine – up to 10 years in jail if more than £5,000 worth of damage is caused. Little wonder Banksy fights to remain anonymous.
But now Banksy is bankable. His home city of Bristol voted to conserve his work, leaving the rebel of the pavements in a strange hinterland between anarchy and acceptability.
And he is not the only one: street artists across the globe now have agents, flashy websites and exhibitions. The genre has graduated from the train carriage to the art gallery.
Last week, artist Shane Waltener held a graffiti masterclass at the Tate – while young graffitists in North Prospect, Plymouth have painted a 40-foot mural with the blessing of the council. The irony is that a tool used by the socially disconnected is now being channelled as a community resource.
But will shifting the focus from ASBO to art class end the grassroots need for guerrilla art?
UK-based artist Dreph began on the street, took a degree and now works commercially with the likes of Reebok and L’Oréal.
Wolverhampton’s Arron Bird – known as Temper – was the first graffiti artist to stage a solo exhibition at Birmingham’s Museum and Art Gallery in 2002. His work includes spray can portraits of Tupac and Jimi Hendrix.
He admitted in a BBC interview, however, that he started out as “some snotty nosed kid with an attitude in a subway”, who found pressing the nozzle on his spray can for the first time “like finding God or something”.
He saw his transition from street artist to acceptance by the art world as a positive move, and says his role is “to keep on opening the doors up”.
Banksy, however, continues to play desperado – and still protects his identity fiercely (although his photo has allegedly been in circulation since 2004).
Recently, he told Lauren Collins of The New Yorker that anonymity was “crippling” him.
“I originally set out to save the world,” he says. “But now I’m not sure I like it enough.”
And as the trail to him grows warmer, some have grown chillier in their appreciation.
When the website www.complex.com recently published the 2004 photograph under the heading New Yorker Helps Unveil BANKSY, it received a torrent of hits attacking him for selling out.
The website also received a letter from lawyers requesting that it cease and desist from publishing the photo, leading to it being censored.
The shot now allegedly shows Banksy in silhouette, looking not very much like a deco warrior, but pretty much as if he has painted himself into a corner – uncensored, the alleged Banksy looks as though he might work in a bank.
His art attacks blend whimsy with agitprop and frequently reveal a landscape of spoiled innocence, stolen moments: kiddies hacking a hole on the Israeli side of the West Bank barrier; Mickey Mouse hand-in-hand with napalm victim Kim Phuc; kissing coppers; the Grim Reaper enjoying an afternoon’s rowing – as well as his trademark anarchic rats.
“If you feel dirty, insignificant and unloved, then rats are a good role model,” he writes on his website. “They exist without permission, have no respect for the hierarchy of society and they have sex fifty times a day.”
He is supposedly self-taught, but photograph the Exmouth Market mural in the right light and you will find the sun shines out of Banksy’s art. (See the one we made earlier.)
The humour is often love-centric: “As soon as you meet someone, you know the reason you will leave them.”
The prose may be elegant, but his work seems constantly torn between the polarities of love and war, placing humanity on the firing line in between – any obscenity arises out of the human condition.
His online manifesto – the moving testimony of an officer who helped liberate Bergen-Belsen – reveals a curious deference to authority from one who lives outside it. (And also begs the question why he should feel the shadow of war so profoundly.)
But it is the inhumanity of authority he attacks – the way it rides roughshod over the individual and diminishes us as we get sucked into the machine.
“I love the way capitalism finds a place – even for its enemies. It’s definitely boom time in the discontent industry,” he told The New Yorker.
But now Banksy is being sucked into the machine – is in danger of being churned out as the people’s painter. He refuses to go without a fight.
“I Can’t Believe You Morons Actually Buy This Shit,” he posted on his website after an auction of his work. He sees his anarchic rats as “powerless losers” whom he hopes will one day gang up, “get some good equipment” and “tear this city apart”.
The Sex Pistols may have gone straight and licensed their back catalogue to advertising, but for now street art is still at large.
Those with more nous than the swanky collector will take direct action and download a free image from Banksy’s website – or head off and take a photograph. Then follow his online instructions:
“Prints look best when done on gloss paper using the company printer ink when everyone else is at lunch.”
And there you have your very own original Banksy.
Never mind the bollocks – we’re the art collectors now.
Unmask Banksy (allegedly) at radaronline.com or complex.com and follow blog link.
Editor’s note: Arts Hub approached Banksy for comments, but the elusive artist was not available.
