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Here's a mystery for you. Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do.

Banksy first became famous for his stencilled subversions of pop-culture images; one showed John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson in a famous pose from Pulp Fiction, with their guns replaced by bananas. What did it mean? Something to do with the glamourisation of violence, yeah? Never mind. It looked cool. Most importantly, it was accompanied by the name "BANKSY" in huge letters, so everyone knew who'd done it. This, of course, is the real message behind all of Banksy's work, despite any appearances to the contrary.

Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I'll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am. Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her.

Wham! The message hits you like a lead bus: America ... um ... war ... er ... Disney ... and stuff. Wow. In an instant, your worldview changes forever. Your eyes are opened. Staggering away, mind blown, you flick v-signs at a Burger King on the way home. Nice one Banksy! You've shown us the truth, yeah?

As if that wasn't irritating enough, Banksy's vague, pseudo-subversive preaching is often accompanied by a downright embarrassing hardnut swagger. His website is full of advice to other would-be graffiti bores, like: "be aware that going on a mission drunk out of your head will result in some truly spectacular artwork and at least one night in the cells". Woah, man - the cells!

He goes on to explain that "real villains" think graffiti is pointless - not because he wants you to agree with them, but because he wants you to know he's mates with a few tough-guy criminal types. Coz Banksy's an anarchalist what don't respect no law, innit?

One of his most imbecilic daubings depicts a monkey wearing a sandwich board with "lying to the police is never wrong" written on it. So presumably Ian Huntley was right then, Banksy? You absolute thundering backside.

Recently, our hero's made headlines by sneaking a dummy dressed in Guantánamo rags into Disneyland (once again fearlessly exposing Mickey Mouse's disgusting war criminal past), and defacing several hundred copies of Paris Hilton's new album (I haven't heard her CD, but I'm willing to bet it's far superior to Blur's godawful Think Tank, a useless bumdrizzle of an album, whose artwork was done by Banksy - presumably he spray-painted it on a brick and hurled it through EMI's window, yeah?).

Right now you can see some of Banksy's life-altering acts of genius for yourself at his LA exhibition Barely Legal (yeah? Yeah!), including a live elephant painted to blend in with some gaudy wallpaper. This apparently represents "the big issues some people choose to ignore" - ie pretty much anything from global poverty to Aids. But not, presumably, the fat-arsed, berk-pleasing rubbishness of Banksy. We're all keeping schtum about that one

Reverend Dale wrote:I hate banksy for the very reasons charlie brooker said:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... visualarts

Here's a mystery for you. Renegade urban graffiti artist Banksy is clearly a guffhead of massive proportions, yet he's often feted as a genius straddling the bleeding edge of now. Why? Because his work looks dazzlingly clever to idiots. And apparently that'll do.

Banksy first became famous for his stencilled subversions of pop-culture images; one showed John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson in a famous pose from Pulp Fiction, with their guns replaced by bananas. What did it mean? Something to do with the glamourisation of violence, yeah? Never mind. It looked cool. Most importantly, it was accompanied by the name "BANKSY" in huge letters, so everyone knew who'd done it. This, of course, is the real message behind all of Banksy's work, despite any appearances to the contrary.

Take his political stuff. One featured that Vietnamese girl who had her clothes napalmed off. Ho-hum, a familiar image, you think. I'll just be on my way to my 9 to 5 desk job, mindless drone that I am. Then, with an astonished lurch, you notice sly, subversive genius Banksy has stencilled Mickey Mouse and Ronald McDonald either side of her.

Wham! The message hits you like a lead bus: America ... um ... war ... er ... Disney ... and stuff. Wow. In an instant, your worldview changes forever. Your eyes are opened. Staggering away, mind blown, you flick v-signs at a Burger King on the way home. Nice one Banksy! You've shown us the truth, yeah?

As if that wasn't irritating enough, Banksy's vague, pseudo-subversive preaching is often accompanied by a downright embarrassing hardnut swagger. His website is full of advice to other would-be graffiti bores, like: "be aware that going on a mission drunk out of your head will result in some truly spectacular artwork and at least one night in the cells". Woah, man - the cells!

He goes on to explain that "real villains" think graffiti is pointless - not because he wants you to agree with them, but because he wants you to know he's mates with a few tough-guy criminal types. Coz Banksy's an anarchalist what don't respect no law, innit?

One of his most imbecilic daubings depicts a monkey wearing a sandwich board with "lying to the police is never wrong" written on it. So presumably Ian Huntley was right then, Banksy? You absolute thundering backside.

Recently, our hero's made headlines by sneaking a dummy dressed in Guantánamo rags into Disneyland (once again fearlessly exposing Mickey Mouse's disgusting war criminal past), and defacing several hundred copies of Paris Hilton's new album (I haven't heard her CD, but I'm willing to bet it's far superior to Blur's godawful Think Tank, a useless bumdrizzle of an album, whose artwork was done by Banksy - presumably he spray-painted it on a brick and hurled it through EMI's window, yeah?).

Right now you can see some of Banksy's life-altering acts of genius for yourself at his LA exhibition Barely Legal (yeah? Yeah!), including a live elephant painted to blend in with some gaudy wallpaper. This apparently represents "the big issues some people choose to ignore" - ie pretty much anything from global poverty to Aids. But not, presumably, the fat-arsed, berk-pleasing rubbishness of Banksy. We're all keeping schtum about that one

a of dkr wrote:well..first of all to be fair i might not really know what he's all about cuz i've just browsed once through a lot of his stuff + the occasional stumbling upon
i'm certainly no big fan, but :
the way i see the world today, i don't find "capitalism is shit, ppl are dying and suffering while others are happily paying interest 30 months for their new couch" as a banal thing.
i agree it should be obvious by now, but unfortunately it's not.
and unfortunately, there are a lot of 9-5 drones struggling just to have the coolest trainers this season.
it might not do any good, because there are some ppl that will only be able to say "yeah, bansky is so cool. i'm so totally like against capitalism" and nothing else, but there might be some other ones that actually got something significant out of it.

i feel that artists who are deliberatly cutting edge without any real substance to their work are far worse than one that uses common sense, simple associations and juxtapositions with a touch of funny.

J-sh wrote: banksy's whole persona kind of pisses me off - the whole idea that he capitalises on anti-capitalism.

DJelements wrote:

J-sh wrote: banksy's whole persona kind of pisses me off - the whole idea that he capitalises on anti-capitalism.

That's it. RIGHT THERE.