Banksy And The Ironic Evolution of Street Art
The gentrification of graffiti
“Subversive. Mysterious. Brilliant.” declares the entrance to the unofficial Banksy exhibition in Soho, London. But, thirty years after the artist started building his reputation, do any of these adjectives still apply?
As international media honed in on the UK during the recent riots, Banksy decided now was the time to make a reappearance. Obviously, whenever a supposed Banksy work pops up, media attention soon follows, but it’s hard not to be cynical that he chose now of all times to go on a vandalism spree across the capital.
But here’s the thing: no one really seems to consider it vandalism when Banksy does it. He’s celebrated for it. In fact, it seems like Banksy decorating London is the least controversial thing to have happened in the UK in the last few weeks.
This begs the question of whether an artist can really be called “subversive” when his work is almost universally praised and sold for obscenely high prices at auctions?
There’s something amusingly ironic about the wealthy paying millions for the works of an artist whose pieces have an unmissable anti-capitalist streak. But the irony doesn’t stop there. While Londoners can pay £12.50 (reduced from £19.50 for the summer sale!) to see Banksy’s works in the unofficial exhibition in Soho (put on by private owners), his recent creations have been disappearing from the streets. It seems that street art is no longer always free to view.
Only hours after its appearance, the fourth artwork in what fans are calling the “London zoo” series was stolen. As a side note, we can deduce from this incident that Banksy probably isn’t a Londoner: he painted a wolf onto a satellite dish in an area with a reputation for petty crime. A non-removable item would have been a better choice of canvas.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that when I tried to visit another of his artworks it wasn’t there. It had been removed, not by thieves this time, but by the local authorities.
Within a day of its discovery, the old police box on Ludgate Hill that Banksy decorated with piranhas was moved to the Guildhall Yard a few blocks away. It will stay here until the authorities decide on a permanent home for it (perhaps another ticketed exhibition?).
A spokesman for the City of London Corporation (the local authority of the City of London) said, “we have moved the artwork to Guildhall Yard to ensure it is properly protected and open for the public to view safely.”
Given what happened in Peckham, they’re right to think it needs protection and the safety concerns are quite legitimate: the police box was right on the curb of the street running between Ludgate Circus, a busy intersection in the heart of the City of London, and St Paul’s Cathedral. Unfortunately, it’s all too common for tourists to stand in the middle of roads to take photos, oblivious of the danger. That definitely would have been an issue here.
All this fuss demonstrates just how unsubversive Banksy’s art has become. His pieces are expensive commodities to be photographed for social media, stolen for a profit or protected from being stolen.
You’re no longer a subversive artist when the establishment puts this much time and resources into protecting your work and proudly puts it on display.
But is Banksy to blame for this? There’s a continuity to his work, the same themes are present in his graffiti on the wall in the West Bank in 2005 and his migrant boat stunt at Glastonbury this summer. Painting an old police box recalls his Kissing Coppers artwork from 2004.
In modern Britain, there’s nothing particularly subversive about Banksy’s political opinions — they align pretty perfectly with the beliefs of the average middle-class Glastonbury attendee and the official statements put out by City corporations. From Brexit, to immigration, to climate change, Banksy is always on the “right side” of the argument. As our population’s values have shifted over the last few decades, the wealthy people, corporations, and sometimes even governments, Banksy criticises have become his biggest allies and fans.
Where does all this leave his credibility as a street artist? If street art is meant to be for the people, what does it mean for it to be taken off the streets because it’s too valuable for ordinary people to be allowed near it without the government or a museum as an intermediary?
Perhaps Banksy is happy with this twist? After all, if he set out to change minds, is this a sign he has won?
Or perhaps the entities grabbing his artworks are just following the money with little interest in the work itself. Whatever the artist and his supporters’ motivations, I expect more of the same in the future: the anonymous moral crusader will paint and the rich will profit.
