Home
sign up| reviews / editor art review |
 content by: editor |
 banksy
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.No hope in Westbourne Grove, London. Banksy isn’t a street artist anymore. He may have made his name with anarchistic stencils over the past decade but there’s not a spraycan in sight in his latest show. Instead, his paintings and installations would sit happily with the 90s shock schlock of Damien Hirst et al.The funny thing is, when you first see the show it appears to be brilliant. The gallery space is filled with amusing one-liners - infamous paintings inverted into dark comments on a messed up society. Live rats morbidly nibble and crawl on a skeleton dressed as a railway security guard and swarm the gallery floors. The entire place reeks of sour rat faeces. But when you leave the crowded gallery space it hits you that there is no hope in the images on display. Banksy depicts a world that is violently decaying and we’re all going with it. Banksy is at 100 Westbourne Grove, London W2, until 24 October 05.
 comments
Read members' comments related to this art.
comment by aliasanother
May 8, 2007
Banksy is the latest in a series of iconoclasts that stretches back to the infamous Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp said that he wanted to "kill art", but within his lifetime his works were taking pride of place in the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art and other hallowed temples - as icons of Modernism. The market place, as exemplified by dealers such as White Cube's Jay Jopling, and the arts hierarchy, as exemplified by Tate Modern's Nick Serota, are so quick to embrace what at first appears to be 'shocking' and 'iconoclastic' that its impact is immediately neutered. Damien Hirst is now the richest artist in the UK, and Banksy's works are highly collectable - their work becomes a commodity. The idea that 'the suits' are being challenged is risible I'm afraid.
comment by doubleshiny
Jan 9, 2007
I saw Banksy's new work as a comment on people's consumption of art and how individual works can lose their meaning and context when they're reduced to commodities. The Jack Vettriano, Hopper and Monet pieces which are re-worked here can be bought in their original form for a couple of quid in Frameworks and the like. They adorn millions of walls, with the artist's name and the work's title at the bottom as a little reminder! What meaning do those pictures have in the context of being bought for next to nothing to fill a space on the living room wall? Some owners of these prints can look out of their window and see yobs hurling chairs, shopping trolleys in canals and cooling towers, and there they are in Banksy's work ready made, and reflecting the reality of where these pictures hang. My boyfriend recently used 'Crude Oil' on a flyer for a club night. When his mate asked him what it was he replied that it was 'Just some picture off the internet'. That's post-modernism for you.
comment by unclemakeupaname
Dec 17, 2006
subverting what the 'suits regard as art' what rubbish. 'the suits' is a nasty generalisation. bansky is as about as underground and subversive as nike. 200,000 dollars for a trite painting that trivalisies poverty making it glib, is real hypocrisy. Where did the proceeds go? Everything about Banksy reductive and obvious. As for merging "high art and mass culture" what about Warhol? What about Duchamp in 1917? Everybody needs to get over the terrible banksy.
comment by martinART
Dec 9, 2006
He is out there trying to subvert what the suits regard as art and thumbing his nose at authority with a sense of humour too. I thoroughly enjoy Banksys work for these reasons alone
comment by JDBrown
Dec 5, 2006
Banksy is most definitely post-modern... if that term actually means anything. What I like about Banksy is that he is slowly blurring the lines of high to popular culture, and by doing that smashes the hegemony that we all accept because of the ideological state apparatus set by today’s beliefs. What I don’t understand is how people can not see the genius of his work, whereas people are slowly accepting a scrunched up piece of paper in a gallery as art! All off his painting do have a meaning, but at the same time it is post-modern enough to allow you to interpret it in your own way.
comment by lordLoppylol
Dec 5, 2006
Banksy is not a genius. Anyone could have come up with his idea. He is just another so called "Artist" trying to shock the people with his so called Post-Modern Art. Why are artist such as Banksy and Emin always trying to shock us with their work. Whatever has happened to the true beauty of art? It has been washed away with trashy, non-imagnative ideas.
comment by Forgotten_Soldier
Dec 5, 2006
I think banksy is a genious, taking high art and giving it that special ingredient of popular culture, mixing the two together. The final result is a piece of art everyone can enjoy and appreciate, its not high art or popular art, its an art for the mass (eveyone). It shows the style of old high art with the breath taking scenery and wonderful views and he takes the common known things of todays world (CCTV cameras) and just slips it into the wondeful scenery and it doesnt spoil it, it enhances the effect of the painting :DForgotten Soldier
comment by littlesashaj
Dec 5, 2006
I think Banksy's Artwork is a Post Modern approach to Art. I think he's work is amazing and is making a statement towards High culture art viewers. The main reason I love his work is because he takes a piece of art from our history, manipulates it, then asks... "Is this still Art?" BANTA LOL!
comment by Nic
Dec 4, 2006
alexwells - I like your take on banksy's work - it's the contradictory impulse of sticking the middle finger up at the established art market, and at the canon, but yet also flogging his work for mega-bucks. V p-mod indeed. By the way, haven't you posed for an oil painting before?crazybabymax - mass media - yes. I wonder if the "pictures" are done in oils, and have texture, or are they computer produced? Did you go to the show?
comment by crazybabymax
Dec 4, 2006
Everything has been done before.Within Banksy's work I think that the culture of today run by the economy like Marx said, and mainly by mass media has had a big effect on his work. Some might say its modern or postmodern, its's very difficult to explain this as everyone has got their own opinion. It's a clever idea of taking and old piece of art and incorporating the culture of today. I think Banksy has acheived this in his work.
|
 |
related info
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
art  art archive Watch artist interviews and see images from British exhibitions. |
send to a friend
useful links
edward hopper
access 1000s of articles