Does anyone else not like Banksy?

[Firky]

and being very aloof

 

[butchersapron]

Some good points by dub, the whole 'urban' thing is the new cool. Even Dizzee Rascal rights songs about it!

I love the way he (Banksy) makes his art public and accessible, but graff' is not just about territorial pissings, or art. It (graffiti) it is also, often a reaction to a situation from the silent majority, a silent but clearly visible mark of defiance.

No body would listen to them, so they paint it on walls for the world to see. Some of it is just utter crap tagging, but some of it is utterly beautiful, and quite thought provoking:

http://www.oxygenkiosk.net/albums/south/imagine.jpg

http://www.oxygenkiosk.net/albums/ps/fantasies.jpg

Some of the most bizzarre, and poetic things I have ever read have been in bus stations, toilets, and under bypasses. Some gems of philosophy in there, and some amazing works of art.

Yep, that's a really good point - there's nothing formal about half the good things in this country. That's why made up ruffness winds some people up.

 

[LDR]

I think he stuff all looks a bit samey to be honest and I'm not entirely comfortable with his painting on animals, etc. I don't dislike him but I do think he's overrated. Having said that, I'm not a graff fan at the best of times.

 

[dlx1]

I think he stuff all looks a bit samey to be honest

That cos he only got one book he does photocopys from. Anyone can paint with a stencil but you got to have a good ideal what make a good stencil.
If his work makes you lol then it a good thing.

Would not call he work graffiti. Now Puzzle from Oz he got can control

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Some of his stuff is fucking cool though.

so why does this guy like Byron so much then?

 

[bluestreak]

i was reading that afflicted site. i'd have some modicum of sympathy with them if the writer in question hadn't criticised him for advertising puma, despite the site having rather tasteless adidas banner ads. the writer is quite obviously a cunt, and a nasty bigoted one too IMO.

i like banksy. his work never fails to entertain IME.

 

[Descartes]

Bluestreak, got to agree, sounded too much like sour grapes than a critical comment.

Of Course he's arrogant, he would not have achieved anything if he was meek and mild.. but I think he's mistaking arrogance for Balls.

Banksy has always had a politcal slant to his work and loves attacking the establishment.

I am almost sure the guy outside of the Crude Oil exihitition giving out the Kate Moss cards was Banksy, wearing a fez, the way he was listening to the comments in the crowd, the smiles and when I pointed a camera at him, from a distance, he immediately turned away and walked away, turned saw me still there and turned away again.

Hmmm. and yes I did get a photo,

His work, the earlystuff was a swipe at authority, the stencils, the use of colour, his positioning of his work,

Recently he has moved to a more, dare I say, intelletual appeal, the use of vanGogh, Hooper, etc the pranks of hanging reworks in gallerys, the stone with the shopping trolley on, etc

All portray his wicked sense of humour, a statement that is missing from a lot of his rivals and contempories. His work lacks the bitterness seen in other work, his use of rats, clearly an anagram on arts, to further underline his disillusionment, a better word might be dis- enchantment, with the art scene.

The nice thing is that he contributed to and improved the image of Graffiti.

 

[Firky]

i was reading that afflicted site. i'd have some modicum of sympathy with them if the writer in question hadn't criticised him for advertising puma, despite the site having rather tasteless adidas banner ads. the writer is quite obviously a cunt, and a nasty bigoted one too IMO.

i like banksy. his work never fails to entertain IME.

It does read very angry and bitter, but like you say I would of had a little bit of sympathy for him, if he didn't write like a pissed off teenager.

(I never had any adidas banners?)

His website is quite good though, he's an excellent photographer and an avid hater of babylonians

 

[Firky]

The nice thing is that he contributed to and improved the image of Graffiti.

Nah, remove the Banksy stamp and people still see it as an eye sore. You and I may not, but middle britain certainly does

 

[neilh]

Nah, remove the Banksy stamp and people still see it as an eye sore. You and I may not, but middle britain certainly does

i'm sure he had some work that specifically mentioned middle britian, can't remember what it was; mebbe something in one of the books, alongside the thing bout folk who get up early in the morning starting all the wars.

 

[Firky]

And another thing right... with regards to what Banksy has done for the image of graffiti:

Jean Michael Basquiat would eat him up for breakfast!

"The only thing the market liked better than a hot young artist was a dead hot young artist, and it got one in Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose working life of about nine years was truncated by a heroin overdose at the age of twenty-seven. His career, both actual and posthumous, appealed to a cluster of toxic vulgarities. First, the racist idea of the black as naif or rhythmic innocent, and of the black artist as "instinctual," someone outside "mainstream" culture and therefore not to be rated in its terms: a wild pet for the recently cultivated collector. Second, a fetish about the freshness of youth, blooming among the discos of the East Side scene. Third, guilt and political correctness, which made curators and collectors nervous about judging the work of any black artist who could be presented as a "victim." Fourth, art-investment mania. And last, the audience's goggling appetite for self-destructive talent: Pollock, Montgomery Clift. All this gunk rolled into a sticky ball around Basquiat's tiny talent and produced a reputation.
"Basquiat's career was incubated by the short-lived graffiti movement, which started on the streets and subway cars in the early 1970s, peaked, fell out of view, began all over again in the 1980s, peaked again, and finally receded, leaving Basquiat and the amusingly facile Keith Haring as its only memorable exponents. Unlike Haring, however, Basquiat never tagged the subways. The son of middle-class Brooklyn parents, he had a precocious success with his paintings from the start. The key was not that they were "primitive," but that they were so arty. Stylistically, they were pastiches of older artists he admired: Cy Twombly, Jean Dubuffet. Having no art training, he never tried to deal with the real world through drawing; he could only scribble and jot, rehearsing his own stereotypes, his pictorial nouns for "face" or "body" over and over again. Consequently, though Basquiat's images look quite vivid and sharp at first sight, and though from time to time he could bring off an intriguing passage of spiky marks or a brisk clash of blaring color, the work quickly settles into the visual monotony of arid overstyling. Its relentless fortissimo is wearisome. Critics made much of Basquiat's use of sources: vagrant code-symbols, quotes from Leonardo or Gray's Anatomy, African bushman art or Egyptian murals. But these were so scattered, so lacking in plastic force or conceptual interest, that they seem mere browsing - homeless representation.
"The claims made for Basquiat were absurd and already seem like period pieces. 'Since slavery and oppression under white supremacy are visible subtexts in Basquiat's work ,' intoned one essayist in the catalog to his posthumous retrospective at the Whitney Museum, 'he is as close to Goya as American painting has ever produced.' Another extolled his 'punishing regime of self-abuse' as part of 'the disciplines imposed by the principle of inverse asceticism to which he was so resolutely committed.' Inverse asceticism, apparently, is PC-speak for addiction. There was much more in, so to speak, this vein. But the effort to promote Basquiat into an all-purpose inflatable martyr-figure, the Little Black Rimbaud of American painting, remains unconvincing."

- From "American Visions", by Robert Hughes

 

[Descartes]

All that sounds very well, a laudable sentiment but...when one looks into the guys work:

http://www.moma.org/collection/brow...:370&page_number=2&template_id=1&sort_order=1

Hmm, not really comparing like with like, very difficult argument to sustain.

 

[surfcatCO]

Banksy is not an artist and if he is then he is a particularly crap one.

 

[Descartes]

SURFCATcO, Maybe you would like to qualify your statement because exactly the same thought is applicable to J.M. Basquait.

Very much, the mentors and sponsors have seen a suitable product to exploit and succeeded. The overall lack of basic artistic ability, the desperate need to rise above the scrawled images and depict an image to illustrate his art.

The book ' A quick killing in art' is aptly titled.

 

[tom k&e]

so why does this guy like Byron so much then?

I'm pretty sure byron never told anyone to fuck off, but I'd be happy if you could prove me wrong.

 

[Dubversion]

Banksy is not an artist and if he is then he is a particularly crap one.

perhaps we could have have the 'objective beauty' argument again.

you'd lose, by the way

 

[Firky]

Banksy is not an artist and if he is then he is a particularly crap one.

Howso? I'm no big fan of Banksy, I do like his some of his work - some of it anyway, I just think he's not all that. I wouldn't go insofar as to not to call him am an artist.

I consider myself a bit of an artist, as much as a photographer and sunday painter can be, any way

 

[Descartes]

OK Firky, some time Photograper and Painter, maybe you would like to post some of your work, as you claim to be an aritist but you cannot applied the same critique to Banksy.

Hmmm, form originality alone Banksy has secured some acclaim, but you consider not as an artist?

 

[Firky]

Where the fuck did I say Banksy wasn't an artist?

"I wouldn't go insofar as to not to call him am an artist."

 

[dlx1]

I'm starting to hate Banksy now from this thread

 

[jms]

Important Question : Does any of this actually matter

 

[e-fluent]

I like this one

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

I'm pretty sure byron never told anyone to fuck off, but I'd be happy if you could prove me wrong.

well his Epitaph for Lord Castlereagh is fairly close

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss.

 

[rich!]

I'm going to admit it.

At the bookfair, I bought the book.

F#in A.

It's also the only book that everyone at work, given a spare minute, wanders over, picks up, and giggles at.





Although, at the price, it should give them orgasms.

 

[Paul Russell]

There's photos of the Crude Oils exhibition on Artofthestate.


crude oils

Please to see the Vettriano one.

 

[dlx1]

Banksy Crude Oils 'Crude Oil' Painting