Wall And Piece
So. Banksy.
For them what have been living under a rock for the last while, Bansky is a graffiti artist who produces stencil works like these.
Is he big or clever?
Well, as my old mate Paul points out, his work is hardly a sophisticated multilevel examination of complex ideas. But on the other hand while he’s currently being feted by art establishment, and generally selling works for stupid prices, that fact remains that he’s essentially a sloganeer. One doesn’t do that sort of thing to deal with terribly complex issues - a good slogan is simply a good way of encapsulating common feeling of your times and/or peer group. Complaining that what he does isn’t terribly highbrow seems rather like criticizing a badger for not being an eagle.
If Banksy, as a sloganeer is suddenly popular, it is presumably because he’s saying something that resonates with people. And if the what he’s doing is a criminal, and yet still popular, it follows that what he’s saying is probably worth listening to, since it would seem to show the establishment as being out of step with its constituents.
And for myself, well, I like a lot of his themes. Yeah they’re a bit teenage boy, a bit “Fight the Power”, but it seems to me that our freedom to express ourselves is increasingly in danger, and our public spaces are increasingly controlled by authorities who take more and more powers to themselves without stopping to ask if we actually want them to have those powers. I think that Banksy and his colleagues have a useful part to play in our modern cultural conversation.