Banksy: for Cantanker
“Barely Legal”
Banksy
Los Angeles
September 15, 16 & 17, 2006
Note: Before reading this article, I recommend that you go to www.banksy.co.uk. Then, Google “Banksy Los Angeles.”
After scanning the first thousand Google hits, you should have realized that Banksy, the Bristol, England-born man with a spray can & plan is an international kultur phenom, and probably the world’s hottest anti-artist. His gritty grand LA/USA debut, “Barely Legal,” was covered by EVERYBODY, including the NY & LA Times, the Guardian and Observer (UK), the Herald Sun (Australia), BBC, AOL, CNN, Yahoo!, Artnet, Raw Story, local TV stations’ news outfits, all the artsy blogs of note, etc. There were snippets of video to be found on YouTube and MySpace, and gobs of snaps on Flickr. Thousands of cosmomulticulturati attended the event. To put that in context, most art-school trained painters are happy if their moms and thirty acquaintances and two hotties show up to the reception they spent two years and 100 K on.
Sure, the all-over painted Asian elephant Banksy Inc. rented from “Have Trunk Will Travel” and “exhibited” dead-center in the “Barely Legal” showroom/living room contributed to the media frenzy. If you didn’t do the suggested research: Yes; you read that right. Maybe now you’ll look at the pictures. Banksy planted a ginormous pachyderm in the midst of the LA seen-it-all cool-for-a-minute throngs, and blew off our bonnets. The animal-rights activists provided Banksy plenty of the (predictable) howls of outrage, eliciting hilarious mea culpas and Fred Sanford-style posturings from government bureaucrats and oodles of fretting and brow furling by serious types across the globe. Weeks later the poo-pooing blather and yammering continues in the press and blogosphere. Banksy laughed all the way to the banksy. He also put on the best warehouse art show this reviewer has seen in twenty years art stomping.
The guerrilla-chic strategy is, of course, old hat to Banksy, though in this particular case the scale was bigger and there are no warrants for his arrest Stateside. That may change, if the PETA sorts have their way. Banksy’s earlier four-legged spray- and fashion-victims were mostly trash-eaters and barnyard cud-chewers, not pretzel-chomping mammals the size of a Venice Beach one-bedroom. Banksy seems to have a predilection for confusing animals with art substrates, or, rather, a knack for pushing buttons on the panties-in-a-twist privileged classes. He claims its a country bumpkin in the big city flip off, and initially this was a gesture aimed at London’s urban graffiti elite. What is it now, if not a proven tool for generating animus. We all been had, in other words; or, if Banksy’s right, such extreme measures have become necessary to bring attention to legitimate social issues. Is Banksy talking over the din of visual pollution (advertising, sentimental dreck, etc.) with the medium that most city managers consider exactly that – visual pollution, a costly blight on the coffers?
Whatever the circular psychology, Banksy knows how to stir the pot. Add to the Tinseltown mayhem gumbo a life-sized hooded Gitmo doll planted next to a kiddie ride at Disneyland and a sprinkling of Banksy’s signature captioned rat stencils down Melrose, a cryptic web invite designed to meme through maximum pre-show buzz channels, and you’ve got a sure-fire recipe for the hottest show in a city built on hottest shows. This from a guy whose antics include installing fake masterpieces (while disguised as an ersatz Peter Sellers/Pink Panther boob) in some of the world’s stodgiest museums, replacing Paris Hilton CDs with sendups reminiscent of Mad Magazine, and installing or spritzing up monumental sculptures (in Trafalgar Square even) so as to give the medium of plop art a brutal wedgie. It’s enough to make a trickster-lover screech with delight. I know I’m inspired… to do what, though, I’m not sure yet. Deface a building? Make a joke? Tease a cop? Send money to Save the Children? Buy a flea market-grade fake painting to modify? If I couldn’t paint paintings I suppose I might do something like that.
Snarky asides aside, Banksy is the current heavyweight champeen in the rogues’ gallery division of the Art Game. His “Barely Legal” blasted Hirst, Barney and the rest of the now-institutionalized sensationalists’ offerings of the past season clean out of the lead in the Notorious standings. Only in the art business can a witty punk born a la John Henry’s hammer with Krylon in his hand get rich from sales of paintings like the one depicting an auction sale of a framed “work” on an easel that reads “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU MORONS ACTUALLY BUY THIS SHIT.” Western Art has a death wish: it’s called the Avant Garde, and Banksy’s the latest iteration in its 100 year-old reign of terrah. In truth, Banksy’s actually the kindler, gentler sort of A-G-ist. At least he didn’t try to butcher Tai (the elephant) and crucify the carcass and spread the guts over a nubile young art student, the way a Viennese Actionist might have. The Folks in his hometown even love him now, and no one wants to paint over his stuff anymore. The Brits love Robin Hoods, and Banksy has become one.
Word in Chinatown is that Banksy’s three-day “Barely Legal” slam in the warehouse slum district on the fringes of downtown LA sparked an artsy spending spree that netted Banksy & crew a little less than a cool Million. Name drop: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie threw down a couple Hundred Thou on a spare painting sketch of Whities picnicking amongst starving Blackies. Plus, a couple Hundred Thou more on two others. …Talk about Clem Greenberg’s golden thread! Already, the murmurs among the oh-so-cynical culturati have floated like scum to the surface of the Banksy post-show party crits. He’ll have to do a lot more painting on the wall separating Israel and Palestine and investing in well-aimed and executed politically correct tags/statements in the international arena to mollify that crowd’s “sell-out” condemnations. Warning: the only thing those posers ever wanted out of life was “more.”
The crowds who attended “Barely Legal” were most-beautiful hipster LA. Everyone had a camera or camera phone and was frantically pushing the button. The pic rigs I saw ranged from palm-sized digi point’n’cliks to old school-phat 4x5 transparency shooters. The flashpops reminded me of free Fridays at the new MOMA. Cool yuppies of all races posing with “Starry Night” like it was a favorite uncle. Same thing at “Barely Legal.” The irony of it is palpable, given the subject matter. The security outfit - employed by Banksy, Inc. to maintain decorum during the photo op/art sale/painted elephant spectacle - was seriously armed, plentiful and hardcore buff. Parking was pretty easy, compared to Beverly Hills’, though on the stretch of Santa Fe Ave. in the shadow of the 10 (the show was in a musty warehouse on Hunter St.), one perhaps felt less than comfy leaving one’s car without a fierce canine arm-mangler perched on the driver’s seat.
The short of it: I love Banksy. He makes me laugh joyfully at the unfunniest of realities, and he’s better than anybody alive at conceiving and stenciling new 2D Pop iconography. I’ve been a fan for years. He’s the flip side to Thomas Kinkade’s paintings of lite, though in a way they’re artsy Siamese Twins. Banksy straddles capitalism and Marxism and has a piss and signs it with a smirking flourish of dexterous twiddle. Kinkade positions himself as a defender of righteousness, while he’s drunkenly pissing on Mickey Mouse and screwing the faithful. It’s too bad though that a Brit has to be the one to bring a taste of ugly truth to the States’ fearful drab staying of the course. His Brit invasion of LA was to some degree an indictment of our failures here at the top of the Free Speech Food Chain. In the big picture of Big A art, Banksy’s no more an outsider than Paul McCarthy. He just plays one on TV. Knowing that doesn’t make him any less gutsy, or make us artists any less culpable for not saying what he’s saying in Barely Legal’s elephant show, first. We need to be grateful for the defeat, but only if it inspires a hinky art-power arms race.
Graffiti flourishes in direct proportion to hypocrisy at the top. It’s been around since the masses got learned written language, kings turned bad and men built walls. Banksy in LA was a sharp jab in the proverbial eye socket of Art, market, utopia, denial, the abuse of power and the seams of disposable society. He’s the Ice T of the art world and he deserves everything he gets. I hope they catch him & carve him up like William Wallace and scatter his limbs to the Four Corners for the hyenas to gnaw. Give Mel, a/k/a the “handler’s apocalypto”, something better to do than stick his foot in his mouth. I plan on producing a line of Banksy knock-offs for E-bay. If you wanna meet his Western Art granpa, visit MOCA while you’re in LA and check out Bob Rauschenberg’s Combine show. Now, there’s a real rebel for ya.
Endnote: Beyond the hype, beyond the ‘tude, Banksy’s message is a Bullseye. He’s yelling, “Freeeeeeeeeeeeeedoooooooooommm!!!!!!!!” Carve, hack. Never mind the bollocks.
