One of the most inappropriate nicknames of all time, at least in my opinion, belonged to Ronald Reagan: “The Great Communicator,” who we’ve come to learn did a pretty shitty job of communicating the government’s problems and indiscretions. A nickname like that deserves a more righteous, honest owner—someone like BANKSY.
Most people think of art as a way of conveying emotions, as opposed to language, the means by which we express ideas. Whatever line there is distinguishing art and language, BANKSY paints over it to make it disappear, then stealthily repaints it in the unlikeliness of places. His works, whether he puts them on the streets, sells them in galleries, or hangs them in museums on the sly, are filled with imagery tweaked into metaphors that cross all language barriers. The images are brilliant and funny, yet so simple and accessible that even children can find the meaning in them: even if six-year-olds don’t know the first thing about culture wars, they have no trouble recognizing that something is amiss when they see a picture of the Mona Lisa holding a rocket launcher. A lot of artists can be neurotic, self-indulgent snobs using art for their own catharsis, but BANKSY distances himself from his work, using art to plant the feelings of discontent and distrust of authority that anyone can experience when he prompts them to ask themselves one gigantic question: Why is this wrong? If it makes people feel and think, he’s accomplished his goal.
BANKSY’s work embodies everything I like about art and nothing I dislike about it. His art is accessible rather than elitist, since he does it on the street; it has a powerful political message that’s conveyed with a sense of humor, which certainly makes the bitter pill easier to swallow; it’s pleasing to look at, because it’s technically very strong but not overly complex and intimidating; and he pulls it off in such a way that its presence in its context communicates not only his message but his dedication to effecting the change he promotes in that message, whether he’s defying Israeli hegemony by painting the separation wall in Palestine or bypassing the elitist review board of a museum by hanging his work himself. He definitely has his share of critics, who say that he burns too many bridges by rejecting countless opportunities to gain money or fame, but he simply has no interest in doing anything that falls outside his goal of making provocative, powerful artwork. He’s a good friend and a tremendous source of inspiration; he’s The Great Communicator of our time, and the most important living artist in the world.
How long are you going to remain anonymous, working through the medium itself and through your agent as a voice for you?
B: I have no interest in ever coming out. I figure there are enough self-opinionated assholes trying to get their ugly little faces in front of you as it is. You ask a lot of kids today what they want to be when they grow up, and they say, “I want to be famous.” You ask them for what reason and they don’t know or care. I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes. I’m just trying to make the pictures look good; I’m not into trying to make myself look good. I’m not into fashion. The pictures generally look better than I do when we’re out on the street together. Plus, I obviously have issues with the cops. And besides, it’s a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old kids out there.
What got you into graffiti? I know that you did more traditional graffiti at one point.
B: I come from a relatively small city in southern England. When I was about 10 years old, a kid called 3D was painting the streets hard. I think he’d been to New York and was the first to bring spray painting back to Bristol. I grew up seeing spray paint on the streets way before I ever saw it in a magazine or on a computer. 3D quit painting and formed the band Massive Attack, which may have been good for him but was a big loss for the city. Graffiti was the thing we all loved at school – we all did it on the bus on the way home from school. Everyone was doing it.
What’s your definition of the word “graffiti”?
B: I love graffiti. I love the word. Some people get hung up over it, but I think they’re fighting a losing battle. Graffiti equals amazing to me. Every other type of art compared to graffiti is a step down—no two ways about it. If you operate outside of graffiti, you operate at a lower level. Other art has less to offer people, it means less, and it’s weaker. I make normal paintings if I have ideas that are too complex or offensive to go out on the street, but if I ever stopped being a graffiti writer I would be gutted. It would feel like being a basket weaver rather than being a proper artist.
Who are some of your favorite graffiti artists?
B: My favorite graffiti is done by people that aren’t in books. I’m really into the amateurs, the people who just come out of nowhere with a marker pen and write one funny thing for one night and then disappear.
“Street art” has been the cool buzzword, and artists have obtained instant credibility from these new fly-by-night galleries, skate companies wanting to do a new street art t-shirt series, whatever. All these people are picking artists that deserve to be picked and have really done work on the streets for 10 to 15 years, but then they also pick a lot of artists that have been doing something for four to six months and built themselves a nice little website. Where do you see yourself fit into that? If the pedestrians at these companies don’t really know who’s done what, how do you separate yourself from that?
B: Most graffiti writers arrive at a style by the need to work fast and quiet. If you arrived at a style by painstakingly drawing in your bedroom and touching up on Photoshop, then people can smell the difference from about five miles away.
How do you decide what commercial projects to work on?
B: I’ve done a few things to pay the bills, and I did the Blur album. It was a good record and it was quite a lot of money. I think that’s a really important distinction to make. If it’s something you actually believe in, doing something commercial doesn’t turn it to shit just because it’s commercial. Otherwise you’ve got to be a socialist rejecting capitalism altogether, because the idea that you can marry a quality product with a quality visual and be a part of that even though it’s capitalistic is sometimes a contradiction you can’t live with. But sometimes it’s perfectly symbiotic, like the Blur situation.
I’m sure you get offered jobs left and right. Are there things that you think about doing that you don’t do, or things that you wish you would’ve done?
B: I don’t do anything for anybody anymore, and I will never do a commercial job again. In some ways it’s a shame, cuz I’m sure I’d have had a good time doing posters for that frozen yogurt company in Hawaii and now I’d have friends I could go visit on the other side of the world. But it’s part of the job to shut the fuck up and not meet people. I never go to the openings of my shows, and I don’t read chat rooms or go on MySpace. All I know about what people think of my gear is what a couple of my friends tell me, and one of them always wants to borrow money, so I’m not sure how reliable he is.
I think there’s a lot to be said for the fine line between secondguessing yourself and respecting a dialogue with people whose opinions you trust, or even people that are great because they don’t know shit about art and you get the most honest reaction from them. Because so many artists, they worry about what trends are happening in art and design and street art, they read too many magazines, and they are too wrapped up in everything; they’re paralyzed.
What’s the most perfect non-traditional piece of art that you’ve seen that’s not currently hanging in a museum?
B: The most perfect piece of art I saw in recent times was during an anarchist demonstration in London a couple of years ago. Someone cut a strip of turf from the grass in front of Big Ben and put it on the head of the statue of Winston Churchill. Later, the demo turned into a riot, and photos of Winston with a grass Mohican were on the cover of every single British newspaper the next day. It was the most amazing bit of vandalism, because it was the perfect logo for this eco-punk movement that was trying to reclaim the streets, bring an end to global capitalism, and defend the right to sit in a park all day getting wasted on discount lager.
Your art is still free on the streets but costly in the galleries. What dictates that?
B: What I find is I don’t have much say in what things cost. Every time I sell things at a discount rate, most people put them on eBay and make more money than I charged them in the first place. The novelty with that soon wears off.
You were talking about how you want your books to be cheap because they show the work in the context of the street, as well as the installations in museums and other pranks, which are actually honest representations of your work. But then people want objects, so they’re going to want the canvases and things like that, and you’re just kind of accepting that people fetishize objects and are willing to pay a lot for the status of owning something that they can hang up.
B: I stenciled the door of an electrical block in south London and recently someone sawed it off and sold it at a famous auction house for £24,000, but in that same week Islington council power sprayed off eight of my new stencils on one road. What I’m finding is art is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it, or willing to pay to not have to look at it.
The redistribution of the wealth then allows you to have that freedom to put work on the street without the pressure of having to sell a thousand cheap canvases – work that’s free and accessible. It really means that the art objects, the canvases, only really play into the people that think in an elitist way and have the money. So really, it kind of balances out. That’s an issue that a lot of artists have. They believe that their work should be accessible to a lot of people, and that actually is the opposite of the way the art world works.
B: The art world is the biggest joke going. It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak. And modern art is a disgrace – never have so many people used so much stuff and taken so long to say so little. Still, the plus side is it’s probably the easiest business in the world to walk into with no talent and make a few bucks.
The murals you did in Palestine, I would assume, involved personal risk. You’re there, and you could definitely get some people pissed off and put yourself in jeopardy.
B: Every graffiti writer should go there. They’re building the biggest wall in the world. I painted on the Palestinian side, and a lot of them weren’t sure about what I was doing. They didn’t understand why I wasn’t just writing “down with Israel” in big letters and painting pictures of the Israeli prime minister hanging from a rope. And maybe they had a point. The guy that I stayed with got five days with the “dirty bag” for waving a Palestinian flag out a window. The dirty bag is when Israeli security services get a sack, wipe their shit on it, and put the bag over your head while your hands are tied behind your back. I spat out my falafel as he was explaining that to me, but he just goes, “That’s nothing. My cousin got it for two weeks without a break.” It’s difficult to come home and hear people complaining about reruns on TV after that. It’s very hard for the locals to paint illegally over there. We certainly weren’t doing it under the cloak of darkness; you’d get shot. We were out in the middle of the day, making it very clear we were tourists. Twice, we had serious trouble with the army, but one time the Palestinian border patrol pulled up in an armored truck. The Israeli government makes a big fuss about how they own the wall, despite building it right through the farmland of Palestinians who have been there for generations, so the Palestinian border police don’t give a shit if you paint it or not. They parked between the road and us, gave us water, and just watched. It’s probably the only time I’m ever going to paint whilst being covered by a cop from a roof-mounted submachine gun.
Did they realize that it favored the Palestinian perspective?
B: I have sympathy for both sides in that conflict, and I did receive quite a bit of support from regular Israelis, but if the Israeli government had known we were going over there to do a sustained painting attack on their wall, there’s no way that we’d have been tolerated. They’re very paranoid. They don’t want the wall to be an issue in the West. On the Israeli side of the wall they bank it up with soil and plant flowers so you don’t even know its there. On the Palestinian side it’s just a fucking huge mass of concrete.
You’ve never really been busted to the point of potentially not being able to do street art, but that’s always a possibility. I could be wrong – you could be incredible and never get caught, but everybody gets caught at some point. What would you do if you were put in that position? Would you rent walls? Would you try to find legal walls? Would you still try to find ways to have work on the street and still maintain your anonymity to a degree, but keep it out there through more legal means? Would you move to another country? What would you do?
B: I’m always trying to move on. You’re not supposed to get dumber as you get older. You’re not supposed to just do the same old thing. You’re supposed to find a new way through and carry on. I invest back into the street bombing from selling shit. Recently, I’ve been pretending to be a construction manager and paying cash to get scaffolding put up against buildings, then I cover the scaffolding with plastic sheeting and stand behind it making large paintings in the middle of the city. I could never have done that a few years ago. Plus, I’m always interested in finding new places to hit up; it’s easier to break into zoos and museums than train lay-ups, because they haven’t had so much of a graffiti problem in the past. Ultimately, I just want to make the right piece at the right time in the right place. Anything that stands in the way of achieving that piece is the enemy, whether it’s your mum, the cops, someone telling you that you sold out, or someone saying, “Let’s just stay in tonight and get pizza.”
Check out www.banksy.co.uk
The godfather of street art would like to collaborate with the elusive Bristol born artist Banksy. Helen Soteriou went to meet the pioneer of the graffiti movement for coffee outside the Cathedral De Notre Dame in Paris.
Can you tell me about your background. Do you remember the first stencil you created and the first time you sprayed it on the wall?
I studied etching not far from here at the L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the equivalent of the Royal Academy in London, before taking a further degree in architecture.
I took my Diploma in Architecture on a playground in the suburb of Paris. It was 1980. At that time I saw some young kids stealing paints and brushes from a supermarket just behind the playground and they used to come to the playground and paint on the walls… and I saw these young kids paint every day as they used to steal brushes everyday, and I told my friend Gerald ‘I want to be like those kids’. …and at that time in Paris there was no graffiti.
I remember the first time we did it. It was in a suburb of the city. The first time we started we tried to make American graffiti like ‘peace’ but we did not have the techniques so it was very bad. I told my friend that we had to make stencils, at that time you used a brush and paint but I had the idea to use spray cans. I did not invent anything. I took ideas from everywhere. The only thing I did was combine things together.
Do you have a favourite image?
Usually the last image is my favourite, but I really like my self-portrait. This art is global art and I am travelling all over the world.
The meaning of this image is very important to me. It is like a man going through the walls. He is travelling from one wall to Paris to London to New York.
Everyone has a different take-home message with your images. They mean different things to different people. Do you have any inspiring stories in response to your images?
I have had a lot of feedback from the homeless image. I think this form of street art should be more orientated towards the social and political problems of our society. Usually street artists express themselves and their own feelings.
People really appreciate it when you talk about something that they know or they are aware of, more than if you talk about violence or say the police. If you talk about something that the people are involved with, they appreciate the work more.
There are many artists who say you are the inspiration for their work, but who inspires you?
Many people inspire me. We are the result of what we have seen before.
I would say I was very influenced by pop art. I was very influenced by the Italian painters from the renaissance, by French writers like Celine . I was very influenced by rock music in the early ‘70s….I was very influenced by American culture and British culture too.
We are the mix of 1000 different things, so it is difficult to say that I was influenced by one guy. I was not influenced by one guy but by a mixture of things.
How do you feel when people like Banksy say that you were their inspiration?
Banksy’s work is a result of what he has seen.
He has a friend called Tristan Manco from Bristol who was really influenced by street art in France in the 80’s, and Tristan Manco showed my work to Banksy at the end of the 90’s, so I think he was influenced by my work by the way of Tristan Manco.
I like his work very much. He is young and knows how to manipulate the media. A very strong guy and a very good artist. Banksy bought something very strong.
It is amazing. I don’t know how old he is, 30 or 40? or where he grew-up. He is working on a movie right now. He asked me to send him some jpegs of my work. I am probably going to be in the movie. It would be a good experience too.
I would really like to meet him. I think we have many things in common.
How do you feel about the limited edition prints being sold for huge amounts of money?
Screen prints are not so expensive. It is expensive, yes, but not SO expensive. Mine are about £100. One large painting costs about £10,000. Prints are for everybody…but I understand. It takes a long time to make £100.
In my opinion, I would say when you leave something in the street it is for everybody but if you want to own something it is different. In my life, I bought things from the other artists. It is a pleasure to have something in your apartment.
Have you collaborated with any other artists, and if not, is there anyone you would like to collaborate with?
I would like to make something with Banksy.
What does the future hold for Blek le Rat? Do you have any shows coming up?
I have a big show in Melbourne on the 3rd December and I am working on this all summer. In October I go to Mexico to make graffiti, and there is going to be a show in San Francisco next May in the White Walls gallery.
My dream would be to work on Alexander the Great. For me, he was the man who bought the Greek culture to India. My dream would be to work on his life. He was born in Macedonia, and actually Macedonia still belongs to Greece right now. So I would like to work in the place that he was born. And then I want to make all these trips from Macedonia to India, to paste posters at each place where he stayed and where he died.
I have to do it before I die. This has been my dream since I was 20 years old.
Is there anything else you would like to say?
In my opinion this is the most important movement of art, because it is a global art, it is everywhere, all over the world, even in China, in Beijing. Is means something, and I’m very proud to belong to this movement.
When I see my friends from the Beaux-Arts school who took a different way, they make conceptual art now and they are 50 years old, they realise they took the wrong way. It is hard for an artist of 50 – 60 years old to realise they went the wrong way. I am sure I took the right way. Street art is the only way to express for an artist.
I am sure that we belong to the evolution of the change of art. It is a pity is is not recognised by the establishment of art.
You have the recognition of the people, and to have that connection, rather than have a few people decide what is worthy or not, is more special I think?
Yes, you are right. But I belong to the old school and when I grew-up the museum was very important…when I was young I wanted to be recognised. But now I realise it is not so important. To be recognised by the people is very important, you are absolutely right.
Blek’s work can be viewed and purchased at Black Rat Press in London and the Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York City
What are you major influences ?
I guess my general environment is what inspires most of my pieces. Moving to Colorado about 2 years ago offered a whole new surrounding which has found its way into my art. I feel the art scene in Denver is thriving and made up of a community of artists that are open to help each other out.
What do you say to the “art snobs” that don’t feel spray paint and stencils are true “art” even though that medium has attracted more attention with what Shepard Fairey has done? Spraypaint in general has got a bad rap over the years. If you went out and painted a wall with a brush no one would look twice. If you bust out a can of spraypaint people think vandalism. I use spray paint because I like the gradients and effects it creates with my stencils. Hopefully, with time, artists will push the limits of what can be created with spraypaint and break this stereotype. I like to feel that I am giving spray paint a better name by using it as a medium in my art.
What is your favorite brand of spray paint ?
Montana Gold. It has a great sheen and dries super fast. (2nd Belton Molotow)
What piece of art that you created are you most proud of ?
Probably my 50th Print. I had carved a ton of linocut blocks between 2004-2006 which I cut up into 1" squares and abstractly glued down to a new board. This piece was a turning point in my art. I started to branch out and try new techniques like gel transfer and stencils. I am also very proud of my latest print Alley Attack. I spent almost a week cutting the 4 stencils for the print. The black stencil alone took me a few days to hand cut each little brick and detail in the building. I decided to hand pull a larger run of Alley Attack screen prints so I could offer them for a lower cost and then still do my usual unique hand stenciled edition. This worked out really well. The transparencies used to burn the screens for Alley Attack were hand stenciled giving the final screen print the same feel as the stencil print.
You have done several collaborations with different artists who out there would you like to work with next ? I have really enjoyed the collaborations I have done recently with Jon Lamb and Michael Ortiz at the "No Anunciar" show at Andenken this April and the "Still Thinking" show back in December of 08. The 3 of us already have some future installations in the works which I am exited for. Tripp and I have been talking about doing another collaborative print this summer. Max Kaufmann and Scot Lefavor are 2 Denver artists that I have been talking to about collaborations. Some longer shot artists I would like to collaborate with are Bast, C215, Rene Gagnon, and Banksy.
What is your favorite collaboration that you have done ?
Hmm... Probably the collaboration with Ben Eine. Ben spent 2 weeks in Denver last year creating pieces for his show at Andenken Gallery. I was able to get down to the gallery about every other day to hang with Ben and watch him create some pieces. The tips and tricks he shared with me helped my stencil art move to a new level. I gave Ben a few of my prints and before he left he gave my Train Tags print back to me with the Circus font sprayed over it. I was also recently able to do a collab with Armsrock when he was in Denver for his show at Andenken Gallery a few months back. I now have a really cool Nike Blazer print with an Armsrock painting blended into it. I am pretty proud of this piece too.
You recently did the Phish Hampton poster with Tripp, any more gigposters in the future ?
Yes, but limited. I would like to focus most of my energy on creating art prints. But, the Phish Hampton poster is certainly not my last. It just needs to be the right opportunity for the right band.
What kind of music do you like? Is there any certain music you listen to while spraying ?
I listen to my iPod on shuffle most of the time. Some of my favorites are Disco Biscuits, Pink Floyd, Ween, Kool Keith, Thievery Corp, and MMW.
Ian was kind enough to include a 43 minute track mixed by him that you can download. Its pretty cool, listening to it as I type this.
Click the link below to download it
You do a lot of commission work for people, do they give you pictures to work from or just ask that you come up with something ? What is the biggest request when it comes to commissioned pieces family pets , nature or something else ?
I guess my biggest request by volume is art of peoples pets. I get it. I have a dog and have done 2 prints of him. I always ask for a picture of whatever is being commissioned and then work from there to create the piece. In the past year, NoiseKing Gallery in Japan has commissioned me to do 4 pieces. It is really exciting to see my art introduced and accepted in Japan.
What other artist have caught your eye? Any specific print that made your jaw drop ?
I saw 2 new Bast pieces the other day that really got me exited. There were 3ft x 5ft ish and hand painted on keyfoods advertisements. I was in a show last month with Samuel Lowder. Some of his stencil collages in the show were really well executed with a great mix of colors.
Do you have anyone else’s work hanging on your walls ?
I like a bunch of other artists and love to collect art in general. Here is what I have hanging.... Living Room: Kinsey(Emancipate), Insect(WireViewsSpecial), Banksy(stop/search), Faile(momenti mori), Lindsey Kuhn(93 AP), Biskup(Yeti Faces), Bast(musk). Dining Room: Fairey(Wage Peace retro), SPQR(artist trade), and 2 tapestries from a trip to South Africa a few years ago. Bathroom: Pollock(I want more) and Jermaine Rogers(ween-5&4numbers-04). In our upstairs loft area: Masthay(morel mushroom), Burwell(staplegun mayhem), Grzeca(OutdoorMiner on wood), and Campbell(EOTWP). I'd have more up, but am out of wall space.
Your cityscapes are just amazing any new ones in the works ?
None actively in the works. I do plan on doing more cityscape this year and have a few cities in mind. I just need to find time to make it happen.
Any advice for new artists ? keep at it.
