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There's a parody Twitter account called @BanksyIdeas. It consists of possible works to be undertaken by the pseudonymous street artist, related in a relentlessly ironic tone. "Stencil of Richard Dawkins arm-wrestling Jesus, yeah?" "Stencil of the Blue Peter ship, yeah? But it's being boarded by a group of Somali pirates." It's one of the few examples of Banksy-related ephemera not mentioned in Will Ellsworth-Jones's Banksy, which is a shame, as he'd surely have something to say about what it might indicate about either the fickleness of hipster taste or the plummeting of the artist's "subversive" credentials; his work is now often as dated in its minutiae as an episode of Trigger Happy TV.
- Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall
- by Will Ellsworth-Jones
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- Buy it from the Guardian bookshop
- Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book
Yet his stock hasn't fallen, as the success of his knowingly self-parodic film Exit Through the Gift Shop makes clear. This disarmingly written biography purports to "follow the career" of its subject, but instead opts for exploring the various dilemmas about art, capitalism and ownership that his work throws up; old issues around turning rebellion into money are given an extra fillip by the technical illegality of the painting in question.
Though he doesn't name him, let alone delve into his early life, Ellsworth-Jones appears implicitly to support the best-known speculation as to Banksy's identity – the Daily Mail's unmasking of him as Robin Gunningham, educated at the very exclusive Bristol Cathedral School. This is more than supported by the fact that he started out with the tag "Robin Banx" before plumping for the less obvious "Banksy", by the first-hand accounts of "one of those oddly classless people, like those you meet in the music industry", not to mention the way his stencils and prints already fit a certain earnest/ironic Bristol stoner profile, with their easy giggles and a somewhat defeated, half-hearted sticking-it-to-the-man.
Whether he is indeed a Clifton public schoolboy or an orphaned ex-docker from Knowle West, there's a productively disjointed relationship between writer and subject in The Man Behind the Wall, such as when the author describes some particularly naughty Banksy action, and recalls the punishment he would have got for it in prep school. One of Ellsworth-Jones's strengths is that he never attempts to sound hip, or even to sound as if he knew much about street art or graffiti before embarking on the biography. There are no interviews and no direct contact with the artist. As a result, Ellsworth-Jones's journeys between the seemingly inimical worlds of art and graffiti register the insular codes and rules of both better than an insider might have done.
Initially, as he follows the young Banksy through Bristol's particularly well-developed and intricate graffiti subculture, Ellsworth-Jones stoutly regards most graffiti and tagging as mere vandalism, but slowly he starts to appreciate the more baroque Bristolian examples. He outlines how Banksy both rejected and seemed to want to be respected by his graffiti elders. Early "straight" graffiti was abandoned for stencilling and clear, legible, instantly understandable sloganeering. Ellsworth-Jones evidently enjoys the fact that they want to communicate some palpable point, some pleasure in figurative form, in a subculture that prefers deliberate illegibility. Graffiti is based around putting up your private logo on the most physically hazardous place, thus displaying your skills and commitment to the extremely small group that will recognise this work as yours. Despite the amount of work that, on this account, Banksy has done for them – putting on exhibitions, renting out "licensed graffiti areas" in Bristol and London – "proper" graffiti artists apparently refuse to accept him as one of their own.
This is especially clear in the sections on Banksy's inadvertent rivalry with the older graffiti artist Robbo, one of whose London works he "improved", eliciting a still-ongoing row, which Banksy has evidently tried unsuccessfully to de-escalate. By the Regent's Canal, for instance, Banksy makes a worthy if slightly trite point by painting "I DON'T BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING" just above the rising waterline. "Team Robbo" then doctors that into "I DON'T BELIEVE IN WAR", adding alongside "TOO LATE FOR THAT SONNY". It's a beautiful encapsulation of Banksy's problem, wanting to communicate at the same time as wanting to be liked by a group who place communication to the public exceptionally low on their list of priorities. Although the author doesn't make it explicit, it sounds a lot like Banksy's later encounters with the art world. Artworks authenticated by Pest Control, Banksy's own authorisation company, elicit huge crowds and large sums of money and get collected by Hollywood actors. He's a populist, loved by the public but sniffed at by the art establishment, a paranoid cousin to Jack Vettriano or Beryl Cook. This critical disdain is, apparently, due to his lack of theory, to the fact that his works can be instantly understood and enjoyed without any prior or accompanying contextualisation. Caught between two equally elitist, self-enclosed (though far from equally monied) cultures, Banksy becomes quite sympathetic in his evident desire to make serious political points and have them understood by passersby. Yet the groan-inducing obviousness and mawkish sentimentality of so much of it (rioter throwing flowers! Small girl with bomb!) is of little concern to Ellsworth-Jones.
That aesthetics is not the book's province is obvious; what makes it intriguing is a relentless following of the money, and the exploration of the tortured interface between art and commerce; Pest Control refuses to authenticate obviously genuine Banksy pieces in public places, out of fear that they'll be severed from their original locations and sold on the art market. Banksy's works and public statements now comment on this ambiguous status so often that they're almost self-referential enough to please his detractors.
• Owen Hatherley's A New Kind of Bleak: Journeys Through Urban Britain is published by Verso.
Comments
1 June 2012 8:31AM
"This critical disdain" is due to the fact that all three of these very different artists are self-made and self-styled and have found their own way to the public heart, thus rendering arts 'professionals' completely irrelevant and a rather expensive superfluity.
If all artists decided for themselves what they wanted to paint and how, what role would be left for the legions of middle-class doley's who want a career in the arts but without actually producing anything?
No, no, no, we can't have artists deciding things for themselves - they must be trashed by the establishment at all costs.
One of these cultures is dominated by actual artists and the other is dominated by 'professional theorists' who control a herd of artist sheep. I suspect that Banksy, taggers and other writers want to remain "elite" in order the keep the spongeing, useless career-theorists out. Slightly different 'elites' wouldn't you say?
Banksy, Vettriano and Cook are the only genuine artists here, because they all decided for themselves what to paint - as all artists should - in conjunction with their perceived or actual public. The officially approved artworld darlings who so regularly feature on Guardian pages are nothing but sheep; not taught any useful craft skills, not encouraged to learn any and spoonfed art-critical "knowledge" which most of society seems to have quite sensibly decided (over the last century or so), is simply not worth knowing.
1 June 2012 10:18AM
Saw this in the shops the other day, was only about a fiver, sounds interesting enough, think I'll pick it up.thanx for the review Owen!
1 June 2012 10:30AM
I gotta agree with the general thrust of your argument. It makes me think of Breton and trotsky's manifesto. Dadaists and conceptualists (and all the rest) were trying to free artists from the constraints imposed on them by the establishment, only to have their methods imposed on future generations by the establishment. Ironic no?
1 June 2012 5:52PM
I agree with you. But I think times are changing. Just as people are slowly beginning to see through the giant financial ponzi scheme that banks and governments conned us into believing was a sound and secure banking system. So the art establishment has conned us into believing that creative output since Duchamp is art.
I would think that most artists and art students students know in their hearts, that what they are producing is not art. After all they have only to objectively compare what they do now with what has been produced over a span of 40,000 years. All bubbles even art bubbles have to burst.
13 June 2012 12:19AM
Ha! Someone once said, all this scratching is making me itch. I do believe you can over analyse sometimes. As the advertising slogan goes, obey your thirst. I'm happy to do that where Banksy's work is concerned
15 June 2012 1:11PM
I remember when I first saw those images. Perfect. Are they better than other images? Not necessarily but they have something a lot of "so called art" does not and have succeeded in becoming "culturally alive" in some way or other. I don't care if someone else finds them "mawkish" or "obvious", of the heaps of art I've seen all over the place randomly or talked about by an "expert" these are some of the most memorable/enjoyable personally I could mention in a conversation positively.
To try to compare, an oil painting of some Biblical scene might do wonders for some people, but it's not relevant to me personally (also no matter what monetary value it also might possess). I also like the idea of urban areas with murals that function in some form about the city or people on a piece of wall that is otherwise grey and decayed and it brightens it up. Why not?
19 June 2012 1:09PM
In Bristol every dickhead over the age of 30 with a pair of Adidas trainers and baggy jeans thinks they know Banksy (actually that describes me and I don't know him, bugger). Three separate people I know claim to be "friends" of his and yet all three have revealed a different name.
It could be argued that they are defending his identity by deliberately not revealing the truth but I have my doubts that any of them have the capability and frankly all three of them are the most irritating dullards I have had the misfortune to meet.
Despite their jobs in estate agency, banking and insurance respectively, they are all still very "street". According to them. One of them's 39 and carries a skateboard with him all the time. I have never once seen him use it.
These are the type of people Banksy attracts in his home town. Which is a shame as I actually quite like some of his stuff.