Banksy is the pseudonym of a British artist, possibly born in the Bristol area in the mid-1970s. He participated in the documentary Exit by Gift Shop, but other details of his biography are unknown. According to a study by Queen Mary University of London, published in March 2016, Banksy could be a man named Robin Cunningham. There has also been speculation that Banksy is the Swiss Maître de Casson. Maître de Casson denies this on his website.
Banksy's Biography
Born in 1973 or 1974, he grew up in Bristol. He became involved in graffiti during this city's aerosol boom in the late 1980s. His work, mostly satirical pieces about politics, pop culture, morality and ethnicity, combines writing with graffiti, stencils and stencils. His stenciling technique is similar to that of Blek le Rat and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass.
Banksy acknowledged Blek le Rat's influence, saying, "Every time I think I've painted something slightly original, I realize Blek le Rat did it better, only a year earlier." His works have become popular as they have been visible in several cities around the world, especially London.
In 2012, the book Freedom Through Football: The Story Of The Easton Cowboys & Cowgirls was published, confirming the first photograph taken of Banksy while doing graffiti in Chiapas, Mexico, in 2001.
Hidden identity
Banksy hides his real identity from the general press, the police and his followers, but this does not prevent various media from publishing from time to time theories about his true identity, here is a list of the speculated identities:
In a 2003 interview with Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian, Banksy is described as "a white man, 28 years old, casually and casually dressed: jeans, T-shirt, a silver tooth, silver chain and silver earring. He looks like a cross between Jimmy Nail and Mike Skinner of the Streets."
The same media describes that Banksy started as an artist at the age of 14, was expelled from school and was in prison for misdemeanors. According to Hattenstone, "anonymity is vital to him because graffiti is an illegal activity." He is also believed to be white, blond-haired and tall. For 10 years in the late 1990s, Banksy lived in Easton, Bristol, and then moved to London around 2000.
Banksy is commonly believed to be Robin Cunningham, born on July 28, 1973 in Yate, 19 km from Bristol. Several of Cunningham's associates and former classmates at Bristol Cathedral School have corroborated this rumor, and in 2016, a study found that the incidence of Banksy's artwork correlated with Cunningham's movements in the area.
According to The Sunday Times, Cunningham began employing the name Robin Banks, a name that eventually became Banksy. There are two cassette covers with his 1993 artwork, made for the Bristol band Mother Samosa, that bear his signature.
In June 2017, DJ Goldie referred to Banksy as "Rob" in a podcast interview.
Banksy was speculated to be Robert Del Naja (also known as 3D), frontman of the trip hop band Massive Attack, who was a graffiti artist during the 1980s before forming the band and had previously been identified as a personal friend of Banksy. However, study of the lives of the two artists suggests that this is unlikely.
Also suspected was Jamie Hewlett, an English cartoonist and comic book designer known for his work Tank Girl and the virtual band Gorillaz. But Joanna Brooks, Banksy's publicist, denied this claim.
In October 2014, a "Hoax" (an Internet hoax or hoax) circulated that Banksy had been arrested and his identity revealed under the name of Paul Horner, where even Donald Trump celebrated the arrest, calling him a "terrorist" through his Twitter account.
On April 16, 2020, in an Instagram post, Banksy referred to the need to remain isolated at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, showing images of rats running madly drawn on the walls and toilet seat in his bathroom. In doing so, he raised further speculation about his private life by saying, "My wife hates it when I work from home."
In September 2020, a theory of a new identity appeared through Twitter, where it was speculated that Banksy is the host of the TV show Art Attack, Neil Buchanan known for his artistic skills to make huge outdoor works.
The theory presents as evidence that the presenter is one of the musicians of the heavy metal band La Marseille, formed in 1976 and that his art has remained intact in the cities where the band has supposedly performed musical shows. Said band has been inactive since 2012, the year in which Banksy rightly achieved great popularity in the media.
He does all this and remains anonymous. I think that's great. These days everybody is trying to be famous. But he has anonymity. (Brad Pitt)
Vallely, Paul (September 23, 2006). "Banksy: The joker". The Independent.
Significant events and works.
Exit through the gift store (2010).
For the world premiere of the film work titled in English as "Exit Through the Gift Shop" at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on January 24, Banksy created ten works of street art around Park City and Salt Lake City.In February, the establishment (pub) known as "The Witehouse" (The Witehouse) in Liverpool, England, was sold for £114,000 at auction.
On a side wall of the building is an image of a giant rat created by Banksy.In March 2010, the work "Forgive Us for Trespassing" was on display on London Bridge along with an art company called Art Below that presented shows on the London Underground.
The work was censored by the local governing body Transport for London, thus, banning the work with its halo, because of the preponderance of graffiti on the Underground.The work was shown without the halo over the child's head, but after a few days a graffiti artist repainted it, so TfL removed the poster. The news appeared in the press, which published several articles noting the poster's progress.
"Banksy paints over the line between aesthetics and language, and then imperceptibly repaints in the least expected places. His works, whether he uses stencils to create them on the street, sells them in exhibitions, or slyly hangs them in museums, are full of sparkle and metaphors that transcend language barriers."
-Wrote Shepard Fairley in Time about Banksy for the Time 100 list in April 2010.
In April, to coincide with the premiere of "Exit Through the Gift Shop" in San Francisco, five of his works appeared in various parts of the city. Banksy reportedly paid a building owner in San Francisco's Chinatown fifty dollars to make use of the wall for one of his stencils.
In May, to coincide with the premiere of "Exit Through the Gift Shop" at Royal Oak, Banksy visited the Detroit area and left his mark at several locations in Detroit and Warren.
A short time later, his mural work depicting a small boy picking up a can of red paint along with the words, "I remember when this was all trees" was removed from the wall by 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios. Gallery officials say they are not trying to sell the work but plan to preserve it and display it in their Detroit establishment. There was also an attempt to remove one of the works in Warren known as "The Girl with the Diamond."
2012
In May, his work "Rat with a Parachute" which was painted in Melbourne in the late 1990s, was accidentally destroyed by plumbers installing new pipes.
2013
In 2013 Banksy published a photo in which he criticizes the role of advertising in society, emphasizing the stereotypes it imposes and the control exerted through it.
2014
In October 2014, a new Banksy mural called Girl with a Pierced Eardrum was found, which refers to a parody of Johannes Vermeer's famous painting Girl with a Pearl Earring, swapping the valuable jewel for a security alarm on the facade of a recording studio in Hanover Place, Bristol. The mural attracted great attention as it was displayed in the city where the artist grew up and appeared after a big rumor about his alleged arrest.
2015
On August 22, 2015 Banksy opens Dismaland, a temporary installation as a theme park erected in collaboration with 58 artists personally chosen by the author.
December 2015 A new Banksy mural appeared in December 2015 portraying the late Apple co-founder and CEO, Steve Jobs in a refugee camp in Calais. The photo of Jobs with a backpack over his shoulder and a Macintosh in his hand is captioned "the son of an immigrant from Syria." The mural denounces the conditions in which Syrian refugees live in the camp "The Jungle" in Calais. The French government will protect the work.
2016
In January 2016, he continues his denunciation of the situation of refugees. His work appears in front of the French embassy in London in the Knightsbridge neighborhood. On a wooden plank appears the little girl from the poster of the musical Les Misérables, with the torn French flag behind her back and a trail of tears on her cheeks, caused by a fictitious tear gas canister.
In the lower area, a QR code refers to a YouTube video where police can be seen using tear gas to clear the refugee camp known as The Jungle in Calais on January 5 of the same year. It is the first work in London since the Olympics and the artist's first interactive "stencil".
2017
March 2017 sees the opening of the Walled Off hotel in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem. With a slogan advertising it as the hotel with "the worst views in the world," it is located in front of the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank.
All of its rooms are decorated by Banksy, and its stated aim is both to attract tourists to the city and to expose works by Palestinian artists to an international and Israeli audience. In a small museum located inside the hotel is a statue of Lord Balfour signing his famous declaration.
In summer of this year appears in different foreign media (Le Figaro, Dayly Telegraph, The Times...) an invitation to Banksy to attend the urban art festival in the neighborhood of Canido in Ferrol on the wall of the house where Francisco Franco was born.
This news appears outlining the importance of the festival and arguing the importance of the event that would give the opportunity to host the "first work of Banksy officially confirmed in Spain" something false, since Banksy himself in his book "Existencilism" (2002) states that he made several graffiti in the Barcelona Zoo at the beginning of his career that were subsequently erased.
In September, Banksy participates with two new murals in an exhibition at the Barbican art center (London), about the famous New York graffiti artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Also in the same month the artist donates a work to the NGO Art the Arms Fair for the cause of disarmament and as a denunciation of the civilian victims caused by the arms industry with its arms fairs. In this case, probably, reference is made to some "collateral damage" that happened in the Syrian civil war in Rojava the week before the creation-public presentation of this donated work.
2018
At the Meninas Graffitti festival in the Canido neighborhood of Ferrol a wall was reserved for Banksy, after publishing an invitation in several foreign newspapers. On that wall someone depicted a couple of two civil guards kissing on the mouth, with a style that resembles Banksy's, although the quality of the stroke seems inferior to that of the English painter.
In an abandoned house neighboring the one that appeared with the graffiti of the civil guards kissing, another painting appeared representing the Infanta Margarita de Velázquez armed with a scimitar in her right hand and with a fetus hanging from her left.
On the dress you can read the inscription "Let them to live" which would refer to the defense of the rights of children and the unborn. It seems, however, unlikely that Banksy advocates such a cause and especially that he does not know English grammar to the point of making a mistake like the one in the transcribed sentence, whose correct form would be "Let them live". Such an error is more likely in a non-native English speaker.
In October 2018, the artist's famous work "Girl With Balloon" ("Girl With Balloon") self-destructed after being auctioned for 1.04 million pounds at Sotheby's, the London auction house, for three times the expected and record for the artist.
Banksy himself spread a photograph on Instagram of the moment the canvas is torn to shreds as it passes through a paper shredder installed at the bottom of the frame.
The auction house stated that a new work of art had been created during the shredding process, changed its name to "Love is in the bin" and gave the successful bidder the option to cancel his bid, but he confirmed his purchase for the auction price.
2019
In 2019 the first Banksy exhibition in Spain "Banksy: Genious or Vandal?" takes place, which is explicitly advertised as "unauthorized" at Ifema in Madrid.
Early 2019 also sees the appearance of his "unauthorized" refurbished academy. With no trace of urban artworks, but presenting other artworks such as photographic montages of ecosexual cut activism as well as a manifesto that would make reference to this movement.
In October 2019, the work "Devolved Parliament" would be auctioned at Sotheby's for eleven million euros, multiplying by nine its estimated starting price.
2020
In August 2020, it became known that he financed, financially and artistically, a boat to rescue migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean, carrying out a first operation on Thursday, August 27, in which he took on board 89 people traveling aboard an inflatable boat.
2022
In November 2022 painted a gymnast as a symbol of hope on the ruins of the Ukrainian war. Specifically, he did it on the wall of a building destroyed by Russian shelling in the town of Borodyanka.[1] He also painted a gymnast as a symbol of hope on the ruins of the Ukrainian war.
Critics
In 2004 the Space Hijackers collective handed out leaflets in front of a Banksy exhibition to highlight the artist's ironic use of anti-capitalist and protest imagery while working for large corporations and art galleries.
Peter Gibson, spokesman for the Keep Britain Tidy campaign, considers his work, like that of other graffiti artists, to be mere vandalism. Diane Shakespeare, an official with the same organization, said, "We are concerned that Banksy is glorifying something that is essentially nothing more than vandalism."
Vandalism in front of works
Just 24 hours after its creation, the work Girl with a Pierced Eardrum in Bristol was stained with black paint in an act of vandalism and criticism of the artist.
Although it is not the first time this type of damage has happened against his work, in the piece called Art Buff in Kent, London two weeks after his exhibition a penis appeared and his piece in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire about the excessive surveillance of the government towards the state was vandalized with red and silver spray.
Another case was the famous Mild Mild West mural in Stokes Croft stained with red paint. Because of the importance and positioning that this artist has achieved over the years, his pieces are now protected with vinyl fibers that allow a restoration against this type of damage.
Banksy's Published books
Banksy has published several books with photographs of his work in different cities, in addition to his work canvases and exhibitions, accompanying the images of his subversive and often sharp writings.
- Banging your head against a brick wall, a book published in black and white in 2001.
- Existencilism (from existentialism and stencil), (2002).
- Cut it Out ("Córtatelo"- alluding to the practice of using the scalpel when making stencils) (2004).
- Wall and piece (2005).
Movies
In 2010, Banksy released his first film as a filmmaker, the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, in which the protagonist Thierry Guetta, a recording enthusiast, meets Banksy thanks to the research he was doing on urban art and begins to discover how fascinating the street artist's work is.
The film was very well received by critics. The documentary was nominated for an Oscar (2011) for Best Documentary Feature and won the Independent Spirit Awards (2010) for Best Documentary Feature.
His activity in museums
Banksy is also known for having introduced in disguise, in famous museums around the world, to hang some of his works clandestinely. In this way, he has placed his works in:
- the Tate Modern Gallery in London
- the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art), The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- the Brooklyn Museum
- the American Museum of Natural History, New York
- the British Museum in London.
In popular culture
In The Simpsons he appears in the episode MoneyBART of season 22, in the opening sequence where the whole city of Springfield is full of graffiti written by him. Bart with his mouth covered writes in the Chalkboard Gag: "I must not write on walls" written everywhere.
In the Couch Gag of the cartoon series, after the family sits on the couch, you can see a dark Asian factory where there are some workers using almost dead animals to make products related to the series.
This has generated great controversy because much of the production of the program is made in a South Korean company, being this a great mockery of the Fox network. His name also appears written on a wall in the episode in which Bart receives an Oscar for the Angry Dad short film.
One more reference to Banksy in the animated series is shown in episode 15 of season 23 called "Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart" (Salida por el Kwik-E-Mart in Latin America) which alludes to the documentary "Exit through the Gift Shop" (2010) in which Bart takes the role of Banksy as "the Barto" and meets Shepard Fairey (who also appears in the documentary) and other street artists.