The forces of taste, fashion and regard have long colluded in a disconcerting way around Banksy. He is an\u00a0\u2018artist\u2019\u00a0that the great and the good of the auction world take as seriously and reverently as your more common or garden fan who gazes upon his grim graffiti and feels they really ought to like it. In a saner world, in which everyone had not colluded on the premise that Banksy is Important and Good,\u00a0he\u00a0would\u00a0be seen\u00a0mainly as\u00a0a vandal and a nuisance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At any rate, his vandalism is lucrative in part because it is a parade of\u00a0\u2018subversive\u2019 clich\u00e9s, so saccharine and obvious they hurt.\u00a0Thus, we have\u00a0little black stencils depicting\u00a0policemen\u00a0kissing,\u00a0the House of Commons filled with chimpanzees, or a girl reaching after a heart-shaped balloon. His art is bad in large part because it is so openly political. He is a\u00a0robo-lefty;\u00a0this was his response to the proscription of Palestine Action \u2013 grafitti\u00a0of a judge beating a protester. Roger Scruton\u2019s idea that beauty is art\u2019s purpose is in permanent violation by Banksy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At any rate, his main selling point is the secret of his identity.\u00a0But his anonymity, long in question, has now\u00a0slipped\u00a0further thanks to some detective work published last week. The story is rather amusing in its mundanity, and a terribly common one, best summed up as:\u00a0\u2018Robin Hood figure, defender of the little people against the System and the Man, turns out to embrace the Man and the System, for they have made him stinking rich\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The real name of Banksy \u2013 who went to fee-paying Bristol Cathedral School\u00a0\u2013 has long been suspected to be Robin Gunningham. After being outed as Gunningham, he changed it to David Jones, the most common male name in the UK. The sleuthing that led to this proposition revolves around a company called NTS Services, incorporated in March 2020 to provide\u00a0\u2018management services\u2019\u00a0and\u00a0maintain\u00a0the\u00a0\u2018client relationships\u2019\u00a0leading to\u00a0\u2018high profitability\u2019. This boring-sounding company also had\u00a0a previous\u00a0name: Nothing\u00a0To\u00a0See Limited, thought to be a riff on a phrase used by Banksy in his 2015\u00a0\u2018Dismaland\u2019\u00a0project,\u00a0possibly the\u00a0most horrible of them all. \u00a0This was a dystopian\u00a0\u2018bemusement park\u2019\u00a0curated by Banksy at a derelict lido in Weston-super-Mare. It was billed a\u00a0\u2018satirical, dark commentary on consumerism, surveillance, and entertainment.; one of\u00a0this\u00a0horror-exhibition\u2019s\u00a0displays was a coin-operated boat full of people wearing headscarves. Subtle, it\u00a0wasn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At any rate, one can certainly enjoy quite a lot of\u00a0consumerism\u00a0with \u00a319\u00a0million\u00a0in one\u2019s pocket, which is the amount that is held by NTS\u00a0Services, according to its most recent annual report.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Banksy is as administratively crafty as he is good at thinking up grotesque bits of\u00a0stencil. Take the story of the two David Joneses. \u00a0The director of NTS Services, a David Jones born in 1972, resigned last\u00a0month\u00a0and was replaced by another David Jones, only this one was born in 1973.\u00a0Further sleuthing last week found that\u00a0a David\u00a0Jones with the same details is linked to another company: Outline Design and Services Limited. The director of this outfit is an accountant named Simon Durban. Simon Durban is the name of the person who spent 15 years as Banksy\u2019s business manager.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The whole Banksy circle has been well-trained: certainly, behind every rich and famous man is a lot of other men, and women. A woman thought to be his mother, outside Bristol, called from her garden:\u00a0\u2018No comment to anything\u2019.\u00a0I was amused by the statement of a former\u00a0neighbour\u00a0of the artist:\u00a0\u2018I once gave him and his partner a lift from the station. They were\u00a0very nice, but I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0know more than that. We let him keep himself to himself, and\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0glad he\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0graffiti my house.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Banksy is as administratively crafty as he is good at thinking up grotesque bits of\u00a0stencil<\/p>\n
There is much satisfaction to be felt at the outing of this scourge of walls the world over, a satisfaction that is enhanced by the sizeable edifice of people around him who speak only in smug obfuscations and riddles. But the real satisfaction might be that if he is\u00a0identified, he might get arrested and the assault on our senses might temporarily stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Banksy is not a law-abiding man who respects private property. He and his team simply\u00a0vandalise\u00a0at night when they can\u2019t be seen, deploy fake filming permits or, most commonly, don high-vis vests and pretend to be builders.\u00a0Presumably\u00a0the artist would not agree with the idea of one law from everyone else and a special leniency for him because he is powerful,\u00a0celebrated\u00a0and rich. But hey ho. Consistency and an avoidance of hypocrisy, especially where wealth and power are concerned, has never really been the way the protesting left\u00a0operates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Either way, Banksy ought to be arrested on a dual charge: vandalism of buildings, and vandalism of culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The forces of taste, fashion and regard have long colluded in a disconcerting way around Banksy. He is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":["post-553116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=553116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}